And I am seized by long forgotten yearning

For that kingdom of spirits, still and grave;

To flowing song I see my feelings turning,

As from aeolian harps, wave upon wave;

A shudder grips me, tear on tear falls burning,

Soft grows my heart, once so severe and brave;

What I possess, seems far away to me,

And what is gone becomes reality.

                       

                                 --Goethe, Faust

Looking at God in the Eyes--PART 1 (C)

As God comes to see the pilgrim with both Eyes, so when the pilgrim comes to appear before God, he must be able to see with both eyes.

                                                                     --Talmud, Chagigah

I entered there and saw, with an eye of some sort of my soul, an eye above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, an unchangeable light.

                                                                    --Augustine, Confessions

Have We not given him two eyes…and shown him the two paths? Yet he would not scale the Height.

                                                                     --Koran, 90

And maybe that's what it means to see Him with two eyes. 

It is easy to look at Him in His pristine Infinity with one eye and at the versatile, detailed world around us with the other.

But that is to not see Him in totality. That is failing to scale the Height and to perceive His unchangeable Light that remains One in the myriad aspects of the mundane. And hence, a one-eyed view does not illuminate our "airy region," the empirical reality that we experience. We must strive to make a full pilgrimage to Paradise while alive, to keep our eyes in Heaven as we look at all the beauty and goodness on Earth.

Her eyes in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

                                            
                                        --William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Looking at God in the Eyes--PART 1 (B) *

I sink 'neath the river cool and clear

Drifting down I disappear

I see you on the other side

I search for the peace in your eyes

But they're as empty as paradise

They're as empty as paradise

       --Bruce Springsteen

After Jacob served his father, Isaac said to him, "Please come closer and kiss me, my son.”

Jacob came closer, whereupon Isaac exclaimed, "Behold, the fragrance of my son is like the fragrance of a field, which the Lord has blessed.”

From this we learn, that the fragrance of the Garden of Eden, of Paradise, entered with Jacob…. 

        --Genesis 27:27 and Rashi

Based on the above explanation of God's likening our manner of gazing at Him to that of the dove's, we can unlock the mystery of the universal symbol of peace.

The dove with the branch in its beak.

After the flood, Noah sent the dove three times to check the situation outside the ark. 

8 And he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

              --Genesis 8

In contrast with popularized opinion, Jewish mysticism does not view the flood as a wanton, meaningless act. Such destruction would contradict God's benevolent character. Similar to the depth of its waters, the flood symbolizes meaning far deeper than what initially meets the eye. 

All too often in life, we seem to face daunting floodwaters of of chaos, confusion, and angst. Nonetheless, our belief in God's inherent goodness strengthens our trust that somehow a higher order, keener clarity, and fulfilling solace will emerge from the flood's wake. Similarly, the Kabbalah teaches us that the flood waters of Noah's times represented a purifying, rectifying force for the entire world: God essentially purified the earth with a flood of spiritual Divine Light. However, the force of the revelation was too potent for the physical world to handle, so symbolically, the earth was "drowned." The mundane world could not sustain the magnitude of the divine revelation. It was thus overpowered and destroyed. 

The first time the dove is sent from the ark with the mission to scout the situation of the world, it finds the earth wholly devoured by the intensity of the Divine Light. There is no dry, mundane land upon which it may perch. It therefore returns dejected, with no possibility of peace or serenity. 

Interestingly, the dove does not bother to return from its third and final mission. At that point, the waters of the flood were completely dried and evaporated, and all that remained was the dry, physical earth- an earth devoid of the Godly waters that once inundated it. As such, the dove has no uplifting message to convey to Noah, for there is no inspiration to be derived from grounds that are divinely dehydrated and parched with spiritual thirst. 


Only during the intermediate state could the dove bring to Noah the sign of peace. For it was on its second mission that the dove beheld a world both visible and physical, yet simultaneously abounding in G-d's revelation. It was only during the second week that the waters of G-d's Light filled our world yet also enabled the physicality of the earth to tower above their gentle ripples. From the epicenter of the waters' glory shone the beauty of the humble but firm olive branches. And it was therefore only then that the dove found peace and brought the branch back to the ark.

Peace is not uniformity, when everything and everyone are the same. A dull lack of variety necessitates not the blessing of peace. 

Peace is not conformity, when one overriding authoritarian force inhibits multiplicity and individuality and stops people from being themselves. There is no harsher war than that.

Peace is not amorphousness, a dearth of creativity and of details. Failure to achieve meaningful content and form shows cowardice and smallness, not peace.  


Peace is, rather, the wondrous unity of differences- the harmony of many dazzling colors, sounds, sights, minds, souls, and all versatility. Peace encourages the myriad details of our world to retain their independence and diversity, yet flow in rhythmic consonance with each other. Peace is reveling in the joy of being different, while concurrently feeling incomplete without the other and his differences. 

Peace and harmony are in fact synonymous. A harmony is not just one sound or a lack of sound. It is the triumphant weaving together of many various sounds.

That was the state of the world during the dove's middle mission. The harmony of the mundane earth with the spiritual waters of the flood.

Many loathe the concepts of God and religion because they view them as stifling forces that crush all beauty and individualism into monotony, void of life and splendor. All too often, people incorrectly think that God prefers His world and its inhabitants to be uniform. They feel that connecting to God would necessitate losing one's selfhood and the ability to individuate.

They think that 'seeking the Divine' entails drowning in the waters of ascetic devotion to the ethereal. They fear that 'being spiritual' requires eschewing themselves and all they see as meaningful in the world, to "sink 'neath the river cool and clear/ Drifting down I disappear." 

Such a path of negation is not peace. It is indeed an empty paradise. "I search for the peace in your eyes/But they're as empty as paradise/They're as empty as paradise."

These people do not realize that God wants no such thing. God wants a beautiful, versatile world. He created it diverse, coupled with the endless potential to develop its variegated splendor even further. 

What He does long for, however, is to be seen: in the multiplicity, in the splendor, in the mundane. As a person that longs for his beloved to see him for who he truly is, his self, within the positive traits that he has, and not just be appreciated for his personality- likewise does God want to be appreciated. He does not want to be recognized as simply the Creator of heaven and earth, but rather as the One Who is manifesting His Light as heaven and earth. As all of us yearn to be seen and encountered fully. So does He. 

He wants us to see the richness of the details in all reality and look at Him in His eyes as we perceive it. He wants us to sense the ineffable Divine in all the aspects of our humanity. 

He wants us to achieve peace: the peace of dry, physical land that has the flood waters of Divinity seeping through it; that intermediate stage when the trees were projecting gloriously through the waters still flowing upon the land.

At that moment, it was the dove that perched itself peacefully on a wet, fresh olive tree, and brought this message of peace back to Noah. For such peace can only be achieved by a dove. As mentioned previously, doves stare at their mates. Their greatest bliss is steadfastly gazing at their beloved straight in the eye.

We are God's beloved mate, His dove. When we view the world as the way in which His Light lovingly manifests, we are passionately gazing into His pupils. 

It is we, therefore, who bring about peace- peace between the waters and the land, the spiritual and the mundane, the mystical and the human. For we, as His doves, perceive both as equally Him.

This is the pleasing fragrance of the real Paradise that entered with Jacob: a Paradise on dry land saturated with flood-waters. The fragrance of heaven that is indeed a place on earth. 

It is by smelling this fragrance and viewing the world with this dove-like perception that one can indeed find peace.

And hence, in the eyes of a dove, a lover of God, one can find peace.** 

* This post is dedicated to my friend Jorian Yonah Schutz. I thought of this idea as he was speaking at a very special gathering at his house.
** See also here that this is the culmination of the Messianic Era, brought about by the Prince of Peace.

Looking at God in the Eyes--PART 2

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,

Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,

Until the lengthening wings break into fire

At either curvèd point,—what bitter wrong

Can the earth do to us, that we should not long

Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,

The angels would press on us and aspire

To drop some golden orb of perfect song

Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay

Rather on earth, Belovèd,—where the unfit

Contrarious moods of men recoil away

And isolate pure spirits, and permit

A place to stand and love in for a day,  

With darkness and the death-hour rounding it. 

                 --Elizabeth Barret Browning

All actual life is encounter.

                  --Martin Buber

It is never easy to truly see someone. And few blessings in this lifetime can compare with the feeling that one enjoys when truly and completely seen by another.

It is noble to empathize with another person’s pain, joy, or experience. One needs to turn aside from his usual preoccupations, take a step from self, and focus on the other person’s life for a while. But that is still not completely seeing the other and standing in total relation to him. That is sharing your being with his.

The encounter of two people at the deepest level, to the extent of utter communion, is when they truly see each other...see all and unleash all that there is to be seen...see nothing else.

That encounter cannot be reached with a supercilious comfort and casualness. It is the labor of a lifetime; it is the deepest experience of life itself. It is the ability to be submerged in the other, to experience the other fully. Only "pure spirits" willing to lose all sight of any distractions that will hold them back from dissolving into the immediacy of the other and to become exclusively present in the one who they are deeply seeing can "stand up erect and strong/Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,/Until the lengthening wings break into fire."

One of the greatest humanists of our time, Martin Buber, wrote an entire work about this goal  - I and Thou.

He built an entire philosophy of relations between man and man, and man and God, by explaining that we are constantly faced with the choice of living in two radically different worlds--the "World of Thou" or the "World of It." This is based on his relating to other men and objects with two opposite attitudes. "To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold nature." He can see them as objects to be viewed, observed, and utilized. As "It"s. Or--

"If I confront a human being as my Thou, and say the primary word I-You to him, then he is not a thing among things, and does not consist of things. He is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a specific point in space and time within the net of the world; nor is he a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless ans seamless, he is You and fills the heavens. This does not mean that nothing exists except him. But all else lives in his light."

"Every actual relationship to another being in the world is exclusive. Its You is freed and steps forth to confront us in its uniqueness."

"I-You can only be spoken with the whole being."

Buber then goes on to explain that in truth, every You experience, every seeing of the other with wholeness and devotion, is essentially an experience of God Himself. 

"Extended, the lines of relationships intersect in the Eternal You. Every single You is a glimpse of that." 


To the extent that even one who "fancies that he is godless--when he addresses with his whole devoted being the You of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God."

And just as when submerged in a terrestrial You, all the rest of life and reality is viewed solely through his light and based on the exclusive relationship with him, so, too, with the Eternal You.

"In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. He who enters into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance--neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven--but, yet, everything is included in the relationship. For to step into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything, but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but to establish it on its true basis. To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence. "Here world, there God" is the language of It; "God in the world" is another language of It ; but leaving out nothing, leaving behind nothing at all, to include the whole world in the You, to give the world its due and its truth, to have nothing besides God but to grasp everything in Him-that is the perfect relationship. 

Men do not find God if they stay in the world. They do not find Him if they leave the world. Whoever goes forth to his You with his whole being, and carries to Him all the being of the world, finds Him who cannot be sought. 

Of course God is the "wholly Other";but He is also the wholly Same, the wholly Present. Of course He is the Mysterium Tremendum that appears and overwhelms; but He is also the mystery of the obvious, nearer to me than my own I."



To live life with intensity and meaning, to stand in exclusive relationship with God by seeing Him in all. To be like the cherubs that always not only face each other, but also see each other, with "lengthening wings [that] break into fire/At either curvèd point." Like two people content to revel in each other's being with devotion and wholeheartedness--to be like that with God, to see the Eternal You as one relates to reality with deliberateness and meaning.

The most important thing is to habituate oneself, to train the thought and mind to recall at all times, that all he sees in the heavens and the earth and all therein are but the outer garments of the King that is enclothed in them.

      

       --Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya 42 

Turn your eyes from me;
    they overwhelm me.

      -- Song of Songs 6

See that caravan of camels

      loaded up with sugar?

His eyes contain that much sweetness.

But don’t look into His eyes

      unless you’re ready to lose all sight of your own.

                             

       --Rumi