"The Way of G-d"

Part 1: "The Fundamental Principles of Reality"

Ch. 4: "Human Responsibility"

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We're now told of an especially efficient way to draw close to G-d (which, again, was the whole point of our having been created in the first place). And i's Torah study.

After all, G-d wanted us to know His wishes for us; and He wanted us to be able to go back to the statement of those wishes again and again. He also wanted us to withdraw from the world in the course of each and every day in order to re-read that statement. That series of wishes is the essential backdrop of Torah-study (though there’s more to it as well, as we'll see).

But unlike the study of anything else, Torah-study works on two levels: on a mere recitative level, and on a deeper, cognitive level.

We're taught that we can grow in our inner beings by merely uttering words of Torah (in the original Hebrew)-- but only once two conditions are met. When we do it *in a spirit of holiness and purity*, and for no other reason that *to fulfill G-d’s wishes*.

That's to say, when we realize that what we're uttering at that very moment is indeed G-d’s own statement of His will; and when we're undisturbed by any thoughts of personal gain (even of the highest order, like the gaining of G-d's own favor for doing that).

All that comes about because the words themselves are infused with an inscrutable "steam" and "thrust" of their own, if you will.

Needless to say, merely uttering scientific, historical, literary and other such texts does nothing to deepen our being, despite the truth and elegance of their pronouncements. Because the words *themselves* aren't significant-- only the ideas behind them are.

Now, when we *delve* into the words of Torah and thus approach them on a deeper, cognitive level, we effect our inner beings all the more so. Since we're nibbling at the very core of G-d's will for us, so to speak. And (in some inexplicable way) communing with His very Being.

It's somewhat analogous to communing with an author's mind while reading his or her work deeply and slowly. But just as you can never truly commune with an author through his works, because so much is left unsaid-- that's all the more so true when it comes to communing with G-d Himself while delving into His Torah. The best way to put it, perhaps, is that you’re communing with G-d's *will for us* at the time, rather than with G-d Himself.

And the most efficacious area of Torah study to delve into in order to fulfill all that on the deepest level is the study of its esoteric secrets and enigmas.

We're also taught that when we engage in Torah study we ourselves enjoy a degree of personal excellence and perfection we wouldn't have come to otherwise, and that the world itself is advanced to a degree, too.

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