005. innate or circular knowledge

000628.1144 - 000726.2351
My first attempt at writing this expression was extremely unsuccessful. This may be because the logic is extremely difficult to follow. In fact, I've mostly moved away from logic at this point because of the continued disappointment it has caused me, due to its inability to accurately relate to the world. A lot of the things which I will discuss in this expression relate to what is written in R' Moshe Haim Luzzato's (aka. The Ramhal) Path of God (Derech HaShem). I have begun to read it at my brother's suggestion, and was surprised to find a great similarity to my first couple of expressions. He clearly goes about his discussion in a more organized fashion, but I'm new at this. Now let us get to the matter at hand:

What is learning, what is remembering? First we will address the concept of communication, in an attempt to solve this problem. Human communication is vital to understand because it is often touted as the thing which separates us from the non-verbal creations. Speech is the highest form of action. Speech is also a way of closing the distance between two individuals. Speech brings us closer. Through much speech over a long period of time, one draws a close friend within oneself. This is the same result as the goal of prayer. Through continued discussions with HaShem we seek to achieve a closeness, a drawing-in of God.

Speech is not the communication of information. This can be done in many ways without speech, assuming it can be done at all. When we speak we establish a relationship, we acknowledge that relative position (which is what a relationship is in essence) through titles, names, language-specific conjugation and many more subtle ways. We already know that in the spiritual realm, relationships become distance. Relationships are also the only thing of value in the spiritual realm, The closer to God, the greater one is. We further know, from the Talmud, which the Ramhal references, that every action and event in this world is actually the result of the goings-on of the spiritual realm. When you complete the thought, that speech effects relationship, which effects the spiritual realm which in turn effects the physical realm, it becomes clear that speech is the highest form of action (as I've stated above).

Now, as to speech as a means of communication, we must return to learning and memory. First let us take an example. Let us assume I tell you something and you hear me say it, and you understand it to mean A. In reality I had said B. What is going on here? If speech is transmission of information, what just happened? In retrospect, if I were to assume speech is the act of transmitting information, I must not have spoken. Rather, I did speak, but I did not relate the information to you. The relationship was faulty. Psychology has spent much time analyzing how the messenger and the message and the environment etc affect communication, all of these affect the relationship which you create and either bring you closer or make you more distant. When information appears to be transferred this is what has actually happened: I have made you (momentarily) more like myself, and so you have been able to perceive the world as if you were me. In my shoes, the information I am trying to 'communicate' becomes both important and obvious to you, and so now you have 'received information.'

Why do I go to such lengths to explain away communication of information? Because it seems obvious to me that everyone, each individual, already knows everything. HaShem has placed us each in our own little glass elevator. We can go wherever we want and do whatever we want, and when we alter ourselves relative to something or someone else, we experience something new. Why do we experience something new? Because we relate to it differently now. HaShem somehow placed a veil over all our eyes and made this fabricated reality seem like the real thing. In Poe's The Purloined Letter we can learn a universal truth: there is no better way to hide something than in plain sight. Everything we perceive in this world is the totality of HaShem, but we perceive it all through relationships. It is these relationships which both blind us and offer us insight. To those who would like further basis for this reasoning, I ask what Ockham would think of any proposition in which multiple levels existed between man and God, when there was another proposition of only a single layer, when both explain the facts equally well.

To understand the point clearly I offer a second situation: (which is in fact the same situation.) I tell you A. You hear B, and you think it is brilliant, when you tell me B again, I hear something different than A, and I think you have thought this brilliant thing up on your own. In effect neither of us thought it up. If we discussed speech in terms of communication we would eventually end up saying one of two things: 1) that some chance noise was interpreted as signal (as in signal/noise ratio for those who don't understand the last statement). Or 2) that you thought of B, it was mere accident that you attributed it to me. (Mere accident? Okay it was you hearing noise and trying to make sense out of it, at which point you invented B yet thought it represented the meaning behind the noise you heard(ie. A).)

From the understanding that speech both affects and effects relationship, it becomes clear that my speech pulled us into a new relationship in which, through our combined perspectives, you could see something which was before invisible or unimportant to you. Because the speech connects us both, and alters both the hearer and the speaker, I am able as well to comprehend this new discovery. More often than not however, with people who have difficulty relating to one another, people re-modulate one another's relationships without ever finding some coincident or common-ground. In this case someone is always saying A, and someone hearing B. This also occurs when someone feels or wants no relationship with the speaker, and so the speaker's words are interpreted in the current frame in which they were never anything new or important to begin with and so the listener remains uninterested.

If one is unwilling to change or better a relationship, no real communication can occur. Now back to learning and memory, although there should be almost no need to address them at this point. People often tell me that the difference between learning something and remembering something is that when you remember it is something you already knew, and when you learn it is something you were not previously aware of. Now there is the long disproof and the short disproof, and I will stick with the short disproof. After I've explained where I am going with this, hopefully you will be able to see the long disproof. Here it is: You already knew everything. Hazal tell us that before a baby is born they know all of Torah (and I conclude-well within the realm of reason---that complete Torah knowledge implies complete knowledge of the world: Midrash: HaShem looked into the Torah and from it he created the world.) and then an angel comes and touches them on the upper lip (hence the indentation) and it is all forgotten. Since this is so, there can be no functional difference, according to the above definitions, between remembering and learning. Learning as we defined it a moment ago cannot possibly exist. Think about the difference in relationships when one learns and when one is reminded, and you will understand the difference between the two. If you really understand this difference you will understand why it says in Pirkei Avoth (the sayings of our fathers) "Who is he that is wise? He who learns from every man." This understanding will fall in the light of the association of humility and wisdom. On reaching such an understanding you realize how obvious and profound the statement and your understanding both were.

This is the essence of my writings, not to communicate knowledge, because you already know all there is to know. Rather, I'm creating a relationship with you, I'm allowing myself to be drawn into you, so that you might see the world the way I see it. In the next and second to last expression I will discuss the mechanism through which HaShem hides the world in front of our eyes: a spiraled pair.