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Thought for the Day: Physical Reality as the Icebergs of the Underlying Sea of Spirituality

Some time ago (oh my gosh... over 11 year! where does the time go?) I wrote at TftD regarding Using Science in Support of Avodas HaShem. In recent discussions, I proposed the following analogy:

The relationship of the physical world that we experience in relation to the spiritual reality is something like the relationship of an iceberg to the ocean.

Howso?

Only about 10% of an iceberg is above water. That means the part you can see is not a great indicator of the actual (entire) iceberg. If you know enough about how icebergs form and how they interact with water and how deep the water is, then you can get a clue as to the size and shape of the total iceberg. Why not just measure what you see and multiply by 10? Consider this: shape and composition of an object affects its orientation when floating. That means that whatever is under water (the hidden portion) has more to do with what is visible than the visible part itself.

There is a profound underlying spiritual reality that is below the surface of the world we experience. Just as studying icebergs will expose the underlying reality only if you understand the mechanism of how icebergs are formed and move, so too a study of the physical world can shed light on the underlying spiritual realm, but only if one has the Torah as a guide to appreciating how the physical is related to and a derivation from it's spiritual "genetics".

Maybe you figure.... I am a simple person. I just go by what I see and I am happy about that. You can try that, but you may want to check out this Wikipedia page: Titanic

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