The revelation of the Divine Reality hath everlastingly been identical with its concealment and its concealment identical with its revelation.
— The Báb, c. 1850 (1976, 112)
The act of meaning a verbal revelation collides and colludes with the limits of language. Revelation and creation merge and emerge with ‘the inner world which secretes its own light’ (Corbin 1971, 5).
For with the appearance of the light, the universe expanded. With its concealment, all existing things were created according to their species.… This is the secret of the act of Creation. One who is able to understand will understand.
— Ketem Paz on Zohar 1:47a (Matt 1983, 214)
From the Valentinian Gospel of Truth, 32:
Understand the inner meaning, for you are children of inner meaning.… Speak from the heart, for you are the perfect day and within you dwells the light that does not fail.
— (Meyer 2005, 106)
All thought is in signs (Peirce); all messages are coded (Bateson) – including revelations. The actual encoding of a message conceals all the other codes that could have carried the same message, and even conceals the fact that other codings are possible. The implications of one encoding always diverge to some degree from the implications of another, and those of the unused encoding are concealed along with it. These concealments are inevitable because one inhabits one meaning space at a time, even when we know that other spaces are no less habitable and other codes might just as well prescribe the path (or describe the place) before us.
Specification misrepresents the implicit by making it explicit. Revelation conceals by articulation.
Zohar 1:31b:
‘Let there be light!’ And there was light (Genesis). Every subject of the phrase and there was exists in this world and in the world that is coming.
Matt (ZP I.194) explains:
The Zohar alludes here to the primordial light, which appeared briefly in this world and was hidden away for the righteous in the hereafter. Bahir 106 (160) identifies the hidden light with the world that is coming, which it takes to mean ‘the world that already came.’ The phrase And there was light is similarly taken to mean ‘There already was light,’ i.e. the primordial light.