Hearing Within The Darkness

Regenerate This is why the word Shema, which means “listen,” also means to “gather,” as we see when the pasuk (Shmuel I 15:4) says “Va’yeshama Shaul es ha’am.” This can’t mean that Shaul “heard” the nation before war; it means that Shaul “gathered” the nation before war to prepare for battle.

Clarity and Confusion

In addition to “static versus process” and “clarity versus creating clarity,” there are several other fundamental differences between the concepts of seeing and hearing. Seeing is more reliable, while hearing is always questionable. This is why the Hebrew word for seeing, “re’iyah,” shares the same root with the word for proof, “raayah.” Witnesses must see an event with their own eyes; hearing isn’t enough (or at least doesn’t carry the same weight). As the saying goes, “seeing is believing”; when you see something, it is far more convincing than hearing about it. (It’s important to state that even seeing is subjective, and one’s physical perception does not reveal a thing’s true nature. However, relative to hearing, seeing is more objective. For more on the topic of subjectivity and the limitations of physical perception, see chapter on Parashas Chukas, “Intellect Provides Limited Knowledge.”) Furthermore, seeing occurs outside of oneself; in other words, your experience of sight is perceived as something external, not something occurring within you. If you look at someone, you don’t perceive them to be inside of you but rather to be outside of you. Hearing, on the other hand, is something that you perceive as taking place within you. Let’s try to explain this.

Hearing is a very difficult process; it requires memory and reconstruction of many different parts. It takes place within you; you have to put the words together yourself, one small fragment at a time. When you’re listening, words are received in small pieces, and you need to reconstruct it inside your head. You recall the fragments and create the picture or sentence inside of your head. This is why hearing is so subjective because each person is reconstructing their own picture inside their own mind. This is of course why no two people ever hear the same thing. If you’ve ever been to a shiur or lecture with a friend, you know that you usually come out with different perceptions. This is because, during the reconstruction phase, we project our own worldviews and perceptions onto the words that we’re trying to reconstruct. We therefore end up reconstructing what we think the person said or meant, instead of reconstructing what was actually meant by the original speaker. This is also why so many mistakes can occur during the learning process. The goal of hearing and learning is to get past the words that are being spoken and get back to the inner meaning behind them. You might think a word refers to one thing, while the speaker uses that very same word for something else entirely. Genuine listening requires negating our own ego and ownership over truth and understanding what the speaker truly means. This is true of all forms of communication, especially in relationships.

Olam Haba vs. Olam Hazeh

The relationship between seeing and hearing reflects the relationship between Olam Haba and Olam Hazeh. This world is a place of movement and process, of change and growth, which reflects the process of hearing. In this world, you get to choose who you’ll become. Olam Haba is the place of being, where you experience the ecstasy of everything you’ve built, and thus reflects the concept of seeing, static and unmoving. No longer can you move or become, but instead, you enjoy everything you created during your life in Olam Hazeh.

Weekday vs. Shabbos

Another manifestation of this principle is the relationship between Shabbos and the six days of the week. Throughout the week we build and grow, whereas on Shabbos we rest from creative activity, experiencing what we have accomplished during the week. (And more generally, where we experience the person we have become so far, after a lifetime of working on ourselves.) This is why the Gemara (Berachos 57b) says that Shabbos is “me’ein Olam Haba – A taste of the World to Come.” Just as Olam Haba is the place where we enjoy everything we have built in this world, Shabbos is the time where we enjoy everything we have built during the week.

This explains a seemingly strange pasuk regarding Matan Torah (the receiving of the Torah). The pasuk (Shemos 20:15) says that when Hashem gave us the Torah, “Ro’im es ha’kolos,” we “saw the sounds.” Of course, we don’t see sounds; we hear them. What, then, does this mean?

This world is a place of movement, a place of “hearing.” In this world, we build our “selves”: we learn, we work, we grow, we become. The spiritual realm is devoid of movement. It is a place of static perfection, of “seeing,” of being. It is in Olam Haba that we experience everything that we built and actualized while in Olam Hazeh. Matan Torah was an experience of Olam Haba taking place within this world. At Matan Torah, we transcended the physical world of time and space; we all became prophets and experienced the infinite spiritual nature of reality. In such a dimension, there is no hearing or movement, only sight. Therefore, sounds weren’t heard; they were seen. Movement became static, becoming became being.

In our next article, we will delve deeper into this fascinating topic and try to understand it on an even deeper level. In the meantime, may we all be inspired to continue to embark on the journey of becoming our ultimate selves!