Spiritual Reality
Looking at an enigmatic story in the Torah, we will see that, to the great personalities, spiritual knowledge was as real as physical knowledge is to us.
Parshas Lech Lecha
Avraham is forced to go to Egypt and on the way, asks Sarah to say she is his sister so they don’t kill him, to get her. They do this and Sarah is taken to the Paro for a wife.
Paro and his household get terribly sick in the reproductive organs, realises it is because of Sarah and returns her, admonishing Avraham.
How could they do this?
How could Avraham risk the life of Sarah for his own?
How could they agree to enter a situation of arayos, a married woman living with someone else?
Nechunya chofer sichin
There is a story in the Gemora (Baba Kama 50a) about Nechunya who dug wells for people doing aliyas haregel (pilgrimage to Yerushalayim.)
One day his daughter fell in a well. They came to Rebbi Chanina Ben Dosa and he said “shalom” (she will come out,) the second hour he said the same and the third hour he said she has come out.
Laws of Spirituality
When asked how he knew she would be saved, Rebbi Chanina explained that he was not a navi, but an entity (of mitzvah) that the tzaddik (Nechunya) had been involved with under such hardship could not harm his children.
To Rebbi Chanina, this was an irrefutable law of spirituality.
This is how Avraham and Sarah could do what they did. We see before, that Sarah had been so alacritous in modesty that Avraham had only recognized how beautiful she was then (in her old age.)
So, having been so cautious with this mitzvah, no damage could come to her in this area. This was as much of a reality to Avraham and Sarah as gravity is to us. Thus, as Rashi explains, Sarah said to the mal’ach strike and he struck.
Thus the end of the Nechunya story; when they asked his daughter who saved her, she said an old sheep happened by, led by a Zakken. Rashi explains it was the ram of Yitzchok led by Avraham
Avraham and Sarah implanted this law of spirituality into the world.
Self-test
How much spiritual knowledge do you have?
Write down 5 instances where you sacrifice things you would otherwise enjoy, for spiritual gain.