The Gemara says, when a man is in his mother's womb a malach comes and teaches him kol Hatorah kulo, teaches him the entire Torah. And just as he's about to come out into this world, the angel makes him forget everything. So the question arises, what's the sense to this procedure? Why teach it to him if you're going to take it away?
ANSWER:
It's never taken away from him, it remains with him. Consciously he loses knowledge of what he possesses, but subconsciously, even sub-subconsciously, somewhere in a man's recesses of his soul there is the wisdom of Hashem. If you want to become great, you have to find ways and means of bringing forth what'sin you already.
Now, how to do that is not for tonight, but one detail will be spoken about, and that's... the world. The world was created for the purpose of bringing forth from a man the greatness in him; nature. If you'll understand this principle about man, how great he is, that he has native wisdom, he's born with deep understanding of things, with endless understanding, only he has to have some way of causing it to come forth.
I'll give you an example. Sometimes you have a well and you want to pump out water with a pump, but nothing comes out. But when you pour water into the pump, so the water in the pump finally makes contact with the well water; that's called priming the pump. Now if you press the pump handle the water will gush out. And so, when you want to get this wisdom that's buried within you, if you'll take what's outside, what the world of nature supplies, the wonders, and you'll put them into your mind - not that makes you wise, not that makes you understand things, no, that primes your pump and it makes contact with the depths that are in your soul - and then the water starts gushing out much more than you put in.
In Mishlei it states, mayim amukim eitzah b'lev ish, deep waters is the wisdom in the mind of a man. There are deep waters in every man, even an unlearned man, v'ish tevunos yidlena, a man of tevunos will draw forth that water. You have to use tevunah, tevunah is a pump, a tevunah pump. A pump of understanding to draw forth the water; but it's there. And nature is the thing that will help you draw forth the wisdom. Now I'm not saying nature is the only opportunity, I mentioned before, Toras Hashem temimah, but that's not the subject tonight.
Tonight the subject is nature. If you look at it you'll see how it draws forth from your soul the depths of the wisdom and your eyes begin to open up.
Good Shabbos To All
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
Important Numbers
