I was interviewing a baal teshuvoh scientist. Our
conversation was recorded by a tape recorder on the table.
When we played the interview back, we could hear all kinds of
background sounds like children playing outside, a truck
passing by, the beeping of a car and the hum of a passing
airplane, but while we were talking, we had taken no notice
of these sounds.
How can we explain this? The answer is quite simple: when a
person's attention is riveted by what his companion is
saying, his consciousness does not register any secondary
sounds in his vicinity. His interest and focus create a
selective hearing that only registers what he wants to hear,
screening out what is disturbing.
A classic example is that of a sleeping mother who can
discern a faint bleat made by her child in the next room but
will not be woken up by the roaring of a passing
motorcycle.
At mass rallies, there are sound technicians who are
responsible for the microphones and the quality of the
amplification system. They listen very carefully to the
voices being emitted by the microphones but are often unable
to repeat even one sentence that was said or one thought that
was presented.
In the audience, there may be an expert on phonetics who
might be intrigued by the speaker's accent and where he comes
from. He, too, will be unable to repeat the message conveyed
by the speaker.
Yet a third person may be a language aficionado and be on the
lookout for grammatical and syntactical errors. He will be
able to enumerate the mistakes the speaker made, but not
repeat the content of his speech. A newspaper reporter for
religious affairs may be on the alert for newsworthy items in
the speech, for a scoop, while being oblivious to the general
gist of the talk and the commentaries the speaker gave on the
weekly parsha.
Is there similar selectivity by the sense of sight? We are,
of course, not talking about closing one's eyes which
everyone can do, but with the phenomenon of the mind not
absorbing something that is within one's field of vision,
since his mind refuses to acknowledge it.
Well, it seems that this does exist and is common. Every
laboratory technician can vouch for it. If a layman looks
into a microscope lens, he will usually close one eye with
his hand or squint. The technician doesn't need to do this
since his mind will not `see' what the left eye is seeing,
only what the eye looking into the microscope is viewing.
Nothing else will be absorbed.
An outsider can master this feat without too much difficulty
if he is intent on seeing what is on the slide that is
showing the streptococci causing his sore throat. He has no
interest whatsoever in continuing to see the table upon which
the microscope is resting. His will neutralize the unwanted
vision and even though his other eye is open, it is, for all
intents and purposes, blind.
There are tzaddikim who can, with both eyes wide open,
be blind to what is in front of them if they fear that it is
something forbidden. But developing this power requires far
more than a simple exercise. When asked by a young man how
one could develop such a marvelous facility, Maran HaRav
Eliyohu Lopian ztvk'l replied that one had to practice
it from a young age.
A person's deep desire, his will, determines the wavelength
upon which his ears tune in, and the official address of that
will is a person's heart. The channel between the heart and
the physical senses is not open and free. Effort and practice
is required to build up control between the heart and the
eyes and ears.
One must learn to concentrate, understand and employ one's
memory, especially when one must overcome laziness or some
other negative trait or inclination.
This can be learned from the angel who seeks to teach
Yechezkel Hanovi the measurements of the future Beis
Hamikdosh. He begins by stating: "Ben Odom! Look with your
eyes, and listen with your ears." Put your heart to
everything that I am about to show you so that your eyes and
your ears will fulfill their function and will help you reach
intense concentration and full absorption, to understand and
remember fully. There is also a need, especially, to pay
attention -- losim lev, to put one's heart to it.
This is a command for central headquarters, the heart. Employ
your senses at their optimal level, and guarantee a perfect
absorption and precise memory in your prophetic mission on
behalf of the Jewish nation.
When Moshe Rabbenu finishes declaiming the Song of
Ha'azinu to Bnei Yisroel, he says to them: "Take to
heart all the things that I am testifying to you today...
for your life depends on it." Rashi explains that a person
must align his eyes, ears and heart so that they will absorb
and understand. This is the implication of "Take to
heart."
The intent of the heart and the alignment of the senses shall
bring you to a full absorption that will guarantee that, "You
shall command them to your sons to heed to do all of the
words of this Torah." Before his death, Yaakov Ovinu also
said to his children, "Gather round, sons of Yaakov, and
listen to Yisroel your father."
A person's ear does not operate like a recording machine and
his eye does not work like a camera. The heart, that is his
will, stands behind the senses, as well as above them. It
dominates the character of their activity and the selectivity
of their operation.
This is well demonstrated when a person reads any article.
His initial approach if a proofreader is different from that
of a censor, and neither of them relate to it as an editor
and certainly not as a person who wishes to become more
informed by its content.
We must conclude that the will of a person grants him a
special control and screening over the network of his
physical senses: a more intense concentration and focus on
the one hand, and a conservation of mental energy to absorb
only whatever interests him, on the other. A mindset and a
sharp focus of will can create a special sieve over the
senses and activate them in a manner that will provide their
master with very specific, specialized and efficient results
which he has programmed in advance.
This is the `attention -- put your heart' which Moshe Rabbenu
aroused on the part of Jewry, and this is what the angel
requested from the Novi Yechezkel.
The knowledge that we are capable of activating such a screen
over our senses can be most effective for us in many ways.
For example, take a person who wishes to review Tanach
with one specific aim of seeing all the places where a king
is said to have died, and wishes to differentiate whether he
is mentioned specifically by name or whether his personal
name is lacking -- such as "And the king of Egypt died . . .
" or "And the days of Dovid to die approached." He can review
the entire sefer Melochim very quickly since only one
detail interests him.
Our holy works state that if a person `chanced' to witness a
sinful act, it is not a coincidence. The very fact that he
saw it comes to tell him that Heaven so ordained it to hint
to him that he, too, possesses a root of that selfsame sin.
If he were altogether innocent or clean of any vestige or
taint of that fault, he would have been spared the sight.
This fact is bound up with the power of the heart to impose
selectivity upon the senses. If the heart is truly pure of
that given sin, the protective screen which it erects upon
the sense does not allow the sight of the sin to penetrate,
for the senses will become blind and deaf to it.
Such a pure person falls in the category of "Lo hibit
ovven beYaakov . . . " He is impervious to the absorption
of something so alien to him. And even when he is told about
the matter and cannot help but hearing it, he immediately
judges the perpetrator favorably and defends him to such a
degree that he does not even hear or believe or accept that
such a thing could have happened as it was told over.
Fortunate is the one who is acquainted with such a
tzaddik.
