“Then Laban and Bethuel answered, “The matter was decreed by Havayah; we cannot speak to you bad or good.”
Is telepathy possible? The way we can answer the question, at least in principle, is by asking whether the Torah provides us with examples of telepathy. If it appears as a phenomenon in the Torah, it is possible.
As it turns out, there is an actual example of thought transmission related in the fourth reading of Chayei Sarah. The main topic of the parashah is the match between Isaac and Rebeccah. Abraham sent Eliezer, his faithful servant, on a mission to find a wife for his son Isaac. Upon arriving in Haran, where Abraham’s family lived, Eliezer stopped by the well and prayed to the God of his master Abraham that he should successfully complete his mission. Eliezer requested a sign from Heaven: if one of the maidens would offer him water to drink and offer to water his camels, this would prove that she was the true and worthy predestined wife for Isaac.
Immediately upon completing his prayer, Rebeccah appeared and offered him water to drink and offered to water his camels. Eliezer was astonished to realize that his prayer had been answered and when taken to Rebeccah’s home, repeated the story of what had happened to her father, Bethuel, and her brother, Laban. The climax of the story appears in the phrase used by Laban and Bethuel to express their own wonder at the unwitty coincidence of Eliezer’s prayer and Rebecca’s arrival on the scene. The spontaneous (and perhaps even unwilling) expression they used was “The matter was decreed by Havayah” (רָבָּדַא הָצָי-הוה יֵמ).
When reading the Torah’s description of the events, one cannot help but be troubled by the apparent repetition of the entire story. While the Torah’s style is usually considered terse, here it depicts, in length, the same events twice: first when they happen, and again when Eliezer relates, almost verbatim, all that had happened. From this we may surmise that the Torah wants to impress upon us that it was Eliezer’s heartfelt description of the events that triggered Rebeccah’s father and brother’s recognition of the truth that he himself felt so strongly—the truth that God’s providence had been at work.
Laban and his father Bethuel, two men renowned for their wickedness, were “telepathically” affected by Eliezer’s inner righteousness. Thus, telepathy can function not only through the silence of thought, but also through the words spoken with a deep sense of conviction by a righteous person. This is like when a tzaddik teaches the hidden meanings of a verse of the Torah—the telepathic power inherent in his words can spontaneously transform reality. Using our sages’ idiom in this respect, “the words spoken by the fathers’ servants [i.e., Eliezer’s repetitive description], is more powerful than the Torah of the children.”
Amazingly, the spontaneous expression of acknowledgment that Laban and Bethuel used, “the matter was decreed by Havayah” (רָבָּדַא הָצָי-הוה יֵמ) has the exact same numerical value, 378, as the word chashmal (לַמְׁשַח), the mysterious word used in Ezekiel’s description of the Divine Chariot. illustrating that chashmal indeed holds the power to accurately transmit thoughts and feelings to others.
Building upon this numerical equality, let us look at another expression in Psalms, which has a similar meaning to the phrase, “the matter was decreed by Havayah.” This second phrase, “He commanded, and they were created” (ּאוָרְבִנְה וָּוִא צּהו), expresses the power of thought to command and to act on reality in a natural way, without need for speech or action. It too has the same numerical value (378) as chashmal.
Not only are these two expressions of affective thought numerically equal, but each also consists of three words, and the middle word in both phrases is equal to 101. A mathematical technique we use to analyze three numbers is “finite differences,” which involves finding the series of numbers before and after the three numbers in question. Applying this method to both sets of three Hebrew words, we find that they both have a base of 75.
י-הוהֵמאָצָירָבָּדַה
אּהוהָּוִצּאוָרְבִנְו
75 is the numerical value of the Hebrew word for “confidence” or “trust” (ןֹחוָּטִּב), indicating that the power of thought to affect reality is connected with the faculty of confidence, which is the inner experience of the sefirah of victory (netzach), in the soul. The two-letter root of “trust,” which is חַט, literally means “to plaster,” and is also related to prayer. Chassidut explains that trusting in God (through prayer) is possible only when an individual has achieved a rectified sense of self and can correctly “expect” and trust that his prayer will be answered. This stands in contrast with the Talmud’s dictum that “he who prays in length and waits for his prayer to be fulfilled suffers from heartbreak,” which in context must be understood as referring to someone who has not yet rectified his or her feeling of self. Telepathy, especially in the case of Eliezer as described above, is thus an example of an individual affecting reality through his rectified sense of self, in a manner like prayer.
Unrectified Talent
However, there is one important difference between telepathy and prayer. Whereas God receives (and answers) only those prayers spoken with humility and a rectified heart, there are people who were seemingly born with the super-natural ability to affect reality telepathically. In many cases, these unrectified individuals use their abilities to serve their own self-centeredness and pride. The tzaddik purifies his thought to make it a tool for his service of God. Just as the mouth is a tool for emitting speech and the hands are the tools of action, so too for thought to become a tool that acts upon reality, one must rectify it and refine it. Much purity of thought is achieved through the power of silence in which a person completely nullifies himself to God in sanctity. Remaining silent in the face of God’s apparently incomprehensible deeds, as did Aaron the High Priest when his two sons died, especially purifies the “garment” of thought.
(Excerpted from a lecture given on the 24th of Cheshvan 5764)
