"The Way of G-d"
Part 3: "The Soul, Inspiration, Prophecy, and the Supernatural"
Ch. 5: "Moses as a Prophet"
Paragraphs 1 & 2
All right -- we've learned so far that there have been false prophets,
near prophets, and full-fledged prophets. We're now going to concentrate
on a whole other order of prophecy -- that of Moses.
After all, it was Moses who was granted the Torah itself in a prophetic
vision, which no other prophet could ever claim; so his level of prophecy
had to have been far more profound than anyone else's. But how so?
Let's backtrack a bit. We spoke before of part of the prophetic experience
being Divine emanations seeping into the prophet's being (4:2,4). Now,
understand that that usually happened to a prophet while he was either in
a trance or dreaming.
But that's not to say that *our* dreams or any trance states we might
enter into are anything like signs of revelation or windows through
anything other than our unconscious minds, because they're not. After all,
we were never trained in prophecy. It's just meant to say that the medium
(or "vehicle") through which G-d's messages came was the prophet's own
unconscious mind.
But one's unconscious mind is by definition out of his control and a
passive phenomenon. Thoughts or communications *occur* to one's
unconscious mind, and there's little he can do initiate them or respond
to them on the spot on a rational level. We'll have to wait to explore the
implications of this fact, though.
Copyright © 2004 by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org
