Footprints of the Infinite

Previous generations knew very little about the wonders of the physical world. Tzadikim may have been able to comprehend great levels of divine wisdom in the spiritual realm and were able to feel Hashem’s greatness in this way. But when it came to the physical world, Chazal were only able to perceive Hashem’s greatness at the level they could see. Therefore they said things like “Every blade of grass has an angel hitting it, telling it to grow”, and that Hashem provides sustenance to all, from the largest animals “all the way down to the eggs of lice”, which they perceived as the smallest form of life. But they did not have the scientific knowledge to see deeper into the physical world. They comprehended great levels of understanding and secrets in the spiritual realm, and in particular in the Torah’s story of Creation, but they were not able to apply their understanding of Hashem’s greatness adequately to the physical world. From the physical perspective, it was assumed that Hashem created everything from nothing, beast and man from the earth, and all in 6 days.

But now before Moshiach’s time, Hashem is giving man an opportunity to see Him clearer than ever, even in the world of malchus, the lowest of the 10 sefiros, and the most hidden. As it says, “emes me’eretz titzmach” - Truth will grow out of the earth itself. We need not comprehend the high spiritual worlds to see G-d. Nature itself declares it! And as the pasuk says in Moshiach’s time, “ve’amdu raglav al har hazeisim” - And His (G-d’s) feet will stand on Har Hazeisim. Zeis, the olive, is the source of oil, which represents wisdom. In Moshiach’s time, we will comprehend Hashem’s greatness and wisdom at the level of the “feet” of G-d as well, which is in the world of Malchus, the lowest of the sefiros.

Elokim = 91 in Gematria, as does the word Ha’teva, which means “Nature” (as well as the word “Hakisei” - The Throne, which symbolizes this world as the Pasuk says השמים כסאי והארץ הדום רגלי) and anyone with eyes today can see Hashem’s awesome greatness by observing the infinite wisdom of the world around us. For the first time, we can comprehend that Hashem’s hashgacha goes far far deeper than blades of grass and eggs of lice, which were the smallest things we could perceive in the past. Today we know that lice and grass are multi-celled organisms that have already undergone billions of years of evolution and massive evolutionary transitions, and are infinitely complex. They could never have imagined in the past that roughly 60 percent of the genes of lice can also be found in humans in a similar form... And that when we look at plant genes, we can find over half of them have some recognisable counterparts in humans!

They could never appreciate the incredibly vast periods of time since the Big Bang, some 14 billion years ago, and the fine-tuning of the universe with thousands of physical laws such as gravity, electro-magnatism, the strong force, the weak force, etc… all of them fine tuned to a millionth of a degree to allow for life to have developed.

Could they possibly have imagined in the past the true vastness of the universe, which is a testimony to Hashem’s infinite nature, with the visible universe alone being some 14 billion light years across, with over 100 billion galaxies, each containing some 100 billion stars, with each star being multiple light years away from the other?

Were they able to appreciate the incomprehensible difference between the smallest particle, say the neutrino (1m 10-25) compared to the large size of the visible universe which is (1m x 1025), with man being almost precisely in middle? This means that the smallest particle to man, is approximately the same ratio as man is to the entire universe. That makes man an awesome giant of infinite complexity! We have over 30 trillion cells in our body working together in perfect harmony, each cell being as complex as an entire city, with perfect machinery, with thousands of different types of proteins and chemical reactions happening at every second, all perfectly in tune to do the exact job that each cell is needed for.

Were we able to appreciate the infinite wisdom in every one of our body’s limbs, say the eye, with 4.6 million cones and 92 million rods, or the infinite wisdom in the way the immune system works in the body, which a human would never be able to fully comprehend even if he spent a thousand years learning how it all works?

Could we ever have appreciated the counter-intuity of the physical world in the area of quantum mechanics, where physical no longer seems physical, where before and after, cause and effect, seem to have no meaning. Where things pop in and out of existence from nothing in the quantum foam of the fabric of space-time… Could anyone have imagined that Hashem’s hashgacha extended to such infinitely small realms, controlling each and every quantum fluctuation and providing energy into every quark, giving it its very existence? Where does this energy come from? Where do the electrons get the energy to spin around the nucleus of atoms? Where does the energy come from attracts and binds particles, such as protons and neutrons, to one another? Where did the energy of the Big Bang come from? And how could the entire universe have been squeezed into an infinitely small point? How can anything physical be infinite if it doesn’t come from an infinite G-d? And infinity is all around us! Every black hole in the universe, of which there are many billions, contains an infinitely small and infinitely dense singularity at its center!

And for a thousand years, those who didn’t believe in G-d would insist that the universe had always existed. Could they have imagined that science itself would prove that there was a moment of Creation through the discovery of the expansion of the universe, clearly pointing to its beginning?

Could we have even dreamed of envisioning phenomenon such as quantum entanglement, which makes no sense to us, and a universe where all of matter seems to add up to only 5% of its total mass, the other 95% made up of dark matter and dark energy, which no one understands? Does this not point to a G-d who can’t be seen, and Whom no one can begin to comprehend?

Could we have imagined that Hashem’s hashgacha extends to every single particle of radiation, instructing it when to decay? Could we have dreamt that nature is not really physical at all, but really a form of energy, and where observation of the quantum world actually decides its state, say between particle or wave, or where a particular electron’s position is at any given time? Or whether the state of an electron is positive or negative? And as long as it isn’t observed, nature at the quantum level seems to be only a range of possibilities rather than actual fact! Who is “observing” all this to determine what actually happens at the quantum level?

Thinking, reasoning and memory, all are phenomenons possible through the average human brain having about 86 billion neurons (or nerve cells), giving it well over 100 trillion synapses or connections (up to 1,000 trillion, by some estimates)! And all of this happening automatically when a baby forms in its mother’s womb…

Could we have ever appreciated how complex the human mind must be to support the phenomenon of consciousness which no one understands, and which each and every one of us experience at every moment, perhaps the greatest wonder of the universe of all?

And how complex and how much infinite wisdom there is in the DNA in every one of our many trillions of cells, each of which contains a 3-D blueprint of our entire bodies, a human’s genetic code containing 6 billion letters, which when divided by eight bits per byte, equates to 1.5GB per DNA strand! The DNA exists in each of the some 30 trillion cells in our bodies, all working together in perfect harmony, with some 200 different types of cells in each of us, each type of cell with its particular function, all in perfect place to sustain the massive giant that is the human being, each of us being an entire universe of infinite and incomprehensible complexity.

Could we have begun to appreciate how all of nature and life work together in perfect balance? Chazal tell us that Dovid Hamelech couldn’t understand why Hashem created the spider, and Hashem showed him that everything has its purpose by making a miracle for him involving a spider. But today we see clearly how perfectly all of life works together, almost like one giant super organism, with over a billion species of life forms having developed since life arose on Earth, and where removing any species at any given time affects the entire balance of nature. For example, if bees were to suddenly disappear from Earth, in the words of A. Einstein, “Life without these insects would be a global disaster. 'Man would have only four years of life left”'. In other words, bees disappearing would lead to the demise of all life on this world as we know it, within just 4 years! Who could have begun to imagine such perfect balance and harmony?

How tragic it is that most of the frum world today ignores or sweeps this all under the rug! What a travesty it is to close our eyes to the scientific discoveries of the past 200 years! Aderaba, before Moshiach’s time Hashem WANTS us to bring Him into the physical world and to see Him in every single quantum fluctuation, something previous generations could never have imagined! The Tzadikim of the past had to be at incredibly high levels of emunah to believe that Hashem’s life-force exists in every living thing and within every inanimate object. But today we don’t need such high levels of emunah, it is right in front of our eyes! For is not all of matter simply a form of energy, as Einstein showed through his famous equation of E=MC2? And where does this energy come from? Should it be removed for even one milli-second, all would completely cease to exist!

And each atom is an infinitely complex creation, a universe of its own, with its nucleus being somewhere on the order of a hundred thousand times smaller than the orbit of its electrons, made up of protons and neutrons in its nucleus, each of which are made up of quarks: with their being 6 types of quarks, up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top. Even if man would study the fabric of matter for a thousand years he wouldn’t be able to come to a true and complete understanding of even one atom!

And who could have imagined the counter intuitivity of light speed being the highest speed possible, such that even should a proton traveling near the speed of light shoot out another proton at that same speed, the second proton would not go any closer to the speed of light than the first? And the fact that the speed of light and time seem to be intertwined by their very nature... Who could have imagined how space and time and really one fabric, and how past and future are all happening at the same time from the point of view of He who stands outside of the universe.

For the first “time”, Time has been shown to be completely relative, such that it changes depending on the speed or location of the observer. No longer must we rely on faith to envision that Hashem knows the future and that He is above time. Today, understanding the reality of this phenomenon is basic science!

Who could have imagined sizes as small as the plank length (1m X 10-36) versus say, a Gigaparsec (1m X 1026), the two of them being over 60 orders of 10 appart, or periods of time like the plank time (1 s X 10-44) vs. the amount of time the visible universe has existed (1 s X 1026). These are numbers we can’t even dream of comprehending.

All of this points to a G-d whose greatness and infinite wisdom we can’t begin to fathom! How fortunate are we today to have been given this glimpse into the infinite greatness and wisdom of G-d in nature itself before Moshiach’s time, and to be able to bring down Hashem into this world through our minds, even into such infinitely small distances and periods of time, and to believe that His hashgacha applies to every quantum fluctuation in the same way that it applies to His overall plan for the entire universe!

Is it so hard to believe that an infinite G-d can be cognizant and determine every single quantum fluctuation? Is anything harder or easier for an Omnipotent G-d? He is in every atom in our bodies, and controls every cell’s function at the tiniest level!

At the level of quantum, nothing seems to be determined without a conscious observation. So if G-d is observing and determining every quantum phenomenon in the universe, is it hard to believe that He hears and listens to every prayer we offer, and sees every thought in our hearts? Humans are as large as the entire universe in relation to the smallest of particles!

How tragic it would be if today we continue to ignore the science that points to an infinite G-d, and to view Him in such a small minded way as having simply created everything Ex nihilo in just six of of “our” 24 hour days, and with the world being only 6,000 years old, and that His hashgacha only extends down to blades of grass or the eggs of lice! How much more awesome is a G-d who foresaw, planned and orchestrated from the first second of the Big Bang, the ultimate creation of human beings, who they themselves are complex enough to discover and wonder about all the awesomeness around us! And Who fine tuned the universe to make all this happen such that the elements needed for life, like carbon, were created over periods of billions of years through the birth and death of stars, and then on the young Earth, atoms came together to create complex molecules, and then those molecules somehow came together to create strands of self-replicating genes, and all this happened over unfathomable spans of time, orchestrated by an infinitely wise G-d, Who is above time and space. And then He brought about the gradual and slow evolutionary transitions of genes to simple cells, and then to complex cells, and then to multi-cellular organisms, all the way until human beings. Why is it that religious people accept the myriads of esoteric interpretations of the story of Creation, and we see clearly in the sefarim how there isn’t one word in the story of Breishis which is literal, each and every statement having an infinite amount of layers of divine secrets and wisdom, yet many people still insist in the literal interpretation of Creation regarding the physical world? Is not the same G-d Who created the spiritual realm the One Who created the physical? Is not the physical world but a reflection of the spiritual?

Studies show today how all of nature evolved through the concept of cooperation, which was the direct cause of all major evolutionary transitions. Perhaps through this we can also begin to understand the uniqueness of the Jewish people, for if G-d wanted humans to continue to evolve higher in the evolutionary chain, He orchestrated a people who would be all connected together in perfect cooperation (which is how it “should” be). And if it would be like this, Moshiach would surely come, for we would have reached G-d’s goal for us. As our Sages tell us, that when we are all united, no nation has any power over us! As we know, kol yisrael areivim zeh lazeh, and if one Jew sins it affects us all, and if one Jew does a good deed it affects us all, for the Jewish people themselves are like one super-organism. This is not possible with any other nation who don’t have the Torah to unite them as one. Therefore, the entire Torah, written by the same infinitely wise G-d, can be summed up according to Hillel in the phrase “What you don’t want done to you, don’t do unto your neighbor” or as Rabbi Akiva said, the Pasuk “Love your friend as yourself” is a pillar of the Torah. For cooperation is the foundation of all great evolutionary transitions, and the Jewish people are supposed to be an entire step above the rest of humanity in this regard. Indeed, when Moshiach comes, all the nations of the world will be given the opportunity to reach this level of evolution as well. And we can see it happening already now slowly, (with all of Western civilization being based on the great truths of the Bible) as they have begun to uphold the rights of every human being, provide aid to every place on Earth in need, and to gather together in the UN to uphold international law of Justice and equality for all (even though they are far still far from doing this properly).

It’s interesting to note that evolution has another aspect which allows the cooperation to develop, and that is “survival of the fittest”. It is only through the demise of those who don’t “make it” that cooperation is able to develop efficiently. In a certain sense, this mirrors the midos of Din and Chesed through which Hashem runs the world. Din is nature’s way of getting rid of those who aren’t fit enough to contribute towards the cooperation of the species as a whole, and the chesed aspect is what keeps all the parts working together, each providing a function that can’t be provided by the others.

Perhaps the fact that evolution also requires large amounts of time for trial and error is reflective of the attribute of “rachamim”, which is the concept of allowing for time, falls and repentance, which translates into a gradual growth towards a more robust person, the new and better being built upon the failures of the past.

Now while Din is necessary for progress, it can easily be abused, and there were always those who choose the side of Din, like esav and Amalek (and the Nazis) who chose the motto of “survival of the fittest” to justify taking advantage of the weak, while the Jews always focused on the aspect of chesed by living in cooperative communities where each person provides what the others are missing (sort of like in a kibbutz). This is actually what Communism was meant to be (having been conceived by a Jew, Karl Marx), and that is perhaps why Hitler hated it so much, for it was the diametric opposite of what Naziisim stood for. Yet, unfortunately, as we know, mankind wasn’t ready yet for Communism since it requires true selflessness and dedication to a higher ideal, which is not possible for a people without the Torah and without a higher calling and purpose. Only when one is truly answerable to a Higher Power can he be ready to give of himself selflessly for the common good. However, the Jewish people are structured to live this way from the get-go since Kabalas ha’Torah, where the rich are commanded to feed the poor, and where we are all responsible for one another (areivim zeh lazeh) such that if we would truly live up to the Torah’s ideals, we would reach a whole new level on the evolutionary scale since that all evolutionary transitions have occurred through cooperation. The ability of an entire nation to live together in perfect cooperation where one cannot make do without the other, is sort of like a new kind of super-organism on the evolutionary scale, and when this would be done perfectly surely the Moshiach would come.

To continue the previous idea, past generations surely couldn’t have imagined the infinite complexity in life forms that are some 10 times smaller than lice, such as Tardigrades (or water-bears) who have complete bodies with legs and mouths, with individual species able to survive extreme conditions—such as exposure to extreme temperatures (from 151 °Cof heat to −20 °C of cold), extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation—that would quickly kill most other known forms of life.

Previous generations’ perception of Hashem’s greatness was either through Emunah, or those great tzadikim who achieved actual ruach hakodesh and were able to comprehend levels of His infinite greatness in the spiritual realms. Yes, this is something which we unfortunately today are far from… But today we don’t have to have such great levels of Emuna or achieve Ruach Hakodesh to perceive Hashem’s greatness. Today we have an opportunity that no previous tzadikim had! With the scientific discoveries of our times, anyone who opens their eyes can see Hashem’s infinite greatness and absolute incomprehensibility in nature itself. He has allowed us to catch a glimpse of Him in the smallest particles of nature. He is hiding in plain site!

Indeed, the more we learn and discover in the physical world, the less we understand. The farther we probe, the clearer it becomes that there is no end to the wisdom to be found in any area we may study, whether in physics, chemistry, biology or astronomy, and from the smallest to the largest. Does this not all point to an infinite G-d with infinite wisdom? Every direction we look there are footprints of the infinite...

And all of these incredible discoveries and information is available today with the click of a mouse on the internet, in everyone’s pocket! Any question one could imagine is answered in seconds (as when I wrote this article, it took only seconds to know how much data each DNA contains, or what would happen if all bees disappeared from Earth!) Today is truly a time where “His feet will rest on Har Hazeisim” (as explained above) is closer than it has ever been before!

In this article we haven’t even touched on a millionth of the infinite wonders of our universe, such as paradoxes in quantum physics and in space-time phenomenon, or when we try to comprehend the fundamental nature of the forces in the universe, such as gravity, the strong force, the weak force, etc. Why do they exist, and why do the elegant mathematical formulas that describe their attributes actually bring these forces to life? And Who decided and set into nature how they should work or how strong or weak each force should be?

How did the Big Bang occur? Why does ANYTHING exist at all? Do all these questions not point to Someone above time and outside of nature, bringing cause and effect into existence, and Who created space, time and matter all at once, as it says “In the beginning (Time) G-d created the heavens (Space) and the Earth (Matter).

Many people imagine that G-d is not interested in “little me” when they see the great scheme of things, and the vastness of the universe. But is it any more difficult for a G-d Who perfectly orchestrated the formation of galaxies over billions of years, to oversee and control every quantum fluctuation in time periods as small as Plank Time? And if He does that, could He possibly not be interested in us humans who are giants of infinite complexity? Is anything harder or easier for an infinite G-d to oversee?

Infinity exists everywhere we look in the universe because it is all part of an infinite G-d. And that is why every good deed that we do, no matter how small it may seem in our eyes, is really precious beyond comprehension. Because no matter how much we would try to adequately serve an infinite G-d, it could never really be sufficient (since no can ever come close to infinity), yet at the same time, the smallest things that we do do are also infinite in nature. This is because both 1 percent of infinity and 90 percent of infinity are both infinite!

This is a powerful thought for those who tend to think that G-d surely doesn’t concern Himself with their petty actions and prayers.

How fortunate are we today to have been given this opportunity by G-d to get a glimpse into His infinite greatness and have the ability to bring His glory and honor into the physical world of Malchus, and to find Him in infinitely small and the infinitely large, something previous generations couldn’t have dreamed of doing.

G-d has opened all the gates of wisdom before Moshiach’s time, as the Zohar says

ובשית מאה שנין לשתיתאה, יתפתחון תרעי דחכמתא לעילא, ומבועי דחכמתא לתתא … (וסימניך (בראשית ז יא) בשנת שש מאות שנה לחיי נח וגו', נבקעו כל מעיינות תהום רבה)

In the sixth hundredth year of the six thousandth year (mid 1800’s), the gates of wisdom will open up above, and the channels of wisdom below...

Surely we must be close to the time of Moshiach, where both G-d and his name (which represents nature) will be shown to be ONE.

מַה־גָּדְלוּ מַעֲשֶׂיךָ ה' מְאֹד עָמְקוּ מַחְשְׁבֹתֶיךָ: אִישׁ־בַּעַר לֹא יֵדָע וּכְסִיל לֹא־יָבִין אֶת־זֹאת