“Noah was in his generations a man righteous and whole-hearted; Noah walked with God.”
So begins the chapter on Noah, immediately confusing the reader with what appears to be a straightforward story about our world.
However, it confuses only those who aren’t yet ready to read the Bible differently, still finding the simple historical narrative about a person named Noah satisfactory.
Ask yourself, “Where am I in this story of Noah?” Or better yet, “What is the meaning of my inner Noah?” You must seek only one approach to the contents of this book: “Everything I read here is about me.” Noah, the righteous, his wife, kids, and all the animals, the ark and the Tower of Babel all exist within me. They are forces, desires that govern my inner and outer worlds. All I have to do is get to them and sense them, and the gates to all the secrets will open for me.
Finding the Point of Noah in the Midst of Our Desires
“And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.”
This means that all our desires are egoistic.
However, we still see amidst all that corruption a certain point, miniscule and lonely, which is completely opposite from everything else on the earth. This is the “point in the heart.”
At the first egoistic level, this point is called “Noah.” The Noah within us is our first spiritual desire. It may be tiny and barely discernible, but we already feel it living inside us. Thus, we have discovered Noah.
Noah’s spark lives inside every one of us. The problem is that we’ve surrounded it with piles of selfishness that continually drown out its soft voice. As the ego grew, it coated Noah with more and more layers, overwhelming it with incessant desires. The pursuit of pleasure distanced man from Noah, making him coarser and more egoistic as Noah’s voice grew more and more faint. Finally, he has become essentially silent.
But Noah didn’t go anywhere. He constitutes the basis of man’s soul. Indeed, he is eternal, and simply waits for the time when man will turn back toward him.
In fact, this point we call “Noah” is the very center of our desires and is directly connected to the Creator. It is also eternal, whereas the egoistic desires surrounding it are short-lived, fleeting, vain and empty. Only that which aspires upward to the spiritual world is eternal, and that is where our desire known as “Noah” aims.
Noah Saving Us from Harmful External Influence
Have you ever wanted to suddenly stop this crazy rat race we call “life,” shut your eyes, cover your ears, and feel the silence that lives inside of you? Have you ever wished to hear the inner voice, un-obscured by foreign influences?
The TV, radio, and newspapers spray you with their advertisements; people both familiar and strangers force their thoughts and desires on you. Money! Power! Fame!
Your inner voice has been suppressed, smothered by all that’s happening around you. As you run along the highway of life, you’re spurred on by foreign desires. It’s only later that you realize that you were wrong, that you never wanted any of these things, that they were simply dictated to you, forced onto you by someone else.
How blissful it feels to be able to stop and hear your own, single desire, pure and disconnected from the material world. It’s the desire to experience spirituality, which is known in the Old Testament as “Noah.” It lives on inside of you, whether you’re a president or a mass murderer.
If you can hear the Noah within you, this tiny altruistic spark called, “Noah the Righteous,” if you can sense the desire to ascend above this world, then you are ready to achieve the peace, security, and eternity that await you on your spiritual path.
Noah: The Point Leading the World to the Creator
We remember that the word “earth” (Eretz) stems from the word Ratzon – desire. Therefore, “The earth was filled with violence” and “It was corrupt” means that your desires are corrupted: you exhaust yourself in pursuit of another’s possessions, you are completely egoistic, and you live only for yourself.
But is there really no answer to all this? Sure there is. Find the “Noah” inside you and save your life, as the text says: “And, behold, I will destroy them with the earth…But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, and your sons, and your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shall you bring into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.”
The whole world is inside you. You are at the highest degree of existence, the tip of the pyramid that includes all the animate, vegetative, and inanimate souls located below you. They are “bound” to you as the one true creature that has a soul and the responsibility to raise itself and the whole world to the level of the Creator.
Thus, this story describes how the desire called “Noah” inside you assembles all the corrected parts of the soul (human, animate, vegetative and even the uncorrected parts that aspire for correction), which is the meaning of “two of every sort,” and comes into the ark with them.
The ark is a kind of screen, a protective force field that you create around you, and that helps you resist external disturbances, meaning all the egoistic influences of this world.
With the help of the ark, the protective screen, you seek answers to the questions, “Who am I? What am I living for? What is most important to me in life?”
You are preparing yourself to find the answers, and you are already certain that your search will be successful, since the point in the heart within you has already awakened and won’t let you rest for a moment. This point maintains direct contact with the Creator, and as it grows within you, it forms a vessel that’s ready to receive the Upper Light. That is the voice you hear, telling you you’re on the right track and that you will definitely reach the Creator, even if you don’t yet feel Him.
“What Is the Meaning of the Story of Noah in the Bible?” is based on the book, The Secrets of the Eternal Book: The Meaning of the Stories of the Pentateuch by Semion Vinokur.
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