Let My People Know

"An instrument in the hands of the Supreme Will"

 
Theoretically, the perfect man can reach an identification with Torah from within himself. 

When a man purifies himself of all the illusions and distortions of his self-centered desires, when he opens up to the divine plenty, he can be like an instrument in the hands of the Supreme Will.

And so the way he does anything will be Torah. 

Except that this way of reaching Torah, which derives from the power to achieve human perfection, is extremely rare, requiring a magnitude of contact with the Divine far beyond the level possible for ordinary man. 

Only the rarest individuals-like the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-can be said to have achieved it.

And even they reached the level of Torah as a way of life only with respect to their own lives and each on his own level. 

So it must appear to us that God's gift to the world in the divine revelation of Torah is a gift in which He bestows not only a guide to the proper life of man and not only a plan for the very existence of the world, but also Himself. 

Or, to put it another way, He gives what we might call His dream of the superior man who could participate with Him on all levels, whether on the level of actual human life or on the level of worlds only vaguely perceived or altogether beyond the senses. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Thirteen Petalled Rose by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz