Simplicity Before and After Complexity

There are two types of simplicities: the one that precedes complexity and the one that follows it. If you take a statement "every Jew is the same". This is simplicity before complexity. This opens up many kushyos. What do you mean all Jews are the same, we may ask? There are men and women, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, frum and not. Then we would engage in complexity, and explain at length about neshamos, and shoresh neshamos of Yisroel, etc. After this lengthy we can come back to the very same adage "all Jews are the same", and understand why it really is the truth.
Sometimes a wise man and a fool say the same thing, and former is right and the latter is wrong, because their simplicity is on opposite sides of complexity. Thus when a wise man and a fool say “all Jews are the same”, although they have used identical words, we realize that they mean two completely different ideas. The fool thinks that literally all Jews are the same, while the wise man realizes that certainly there are differences between Jews, but the pnimi, essential common denominator is what’s important, and all of the differences are merely cosmetic. (See Rambam’s Hakdama L’perek Chelek. There, the Rambam discusses different approaches to aggadta. The first approach understands them literally, while the third approach sees the depth behind the statement of Chazal. They see the same words, but come out with drastically different ideas.)
This idea comes up in our learning as well, in a klal-prat-veklal paradigm. At times we depart from an idea just to come back to it, but looking at it from a higher perspective. We are told a simple idea, we delve into it and realize that it’s actually highly complex, and then, once we grasp it fully, we come back to its simple formation. For example, we say “isho mishum chitzav”, namely, that when a person sets something on fire, it’s as if he damage with his hands. As the person does the Gemara, Rishonim, Achronim, he realizes that this yesod is much more complex than it would seem at first (for example, the Nemukei Yosef’s kushya, if isho mishum chtzov, how is it possible to have a candle burning on Shabbos? Isn’t his lighting before Shabbos extending into lighting on Shabbos?). Once he masters the whole sugya, he can come back to the klal of isho mishum chitzav, and that klal, with its nuances, is correct. This is the spiral helix model, you walk round and round on a spiral staircase, ending up at the same place, but constantly from a higher view. A person learns Bava Kama when he is fifteen, twenty, thirty, etc. On one level, he is learning the same Bava Kama, but now he has new insights, to come to understand (much deeper) the yesodos that he learned as a child[1].
Rav Ashlag applies this idea to kavana of briya. In potential (stage 1), people are perfect. We must be created with chisronos so that we can be metaken these chisronos (stage 2) and thus reach our perfection (step 3). We start with perfection and end up with perfection, with a yerida letzirech aliya in the middle.
I received great inspiration from limud hashkafa. I decided that instead of learning hashkafa for a few minutes per day, I would dedicate much longer periods of time, dissecting carefully each sefer to figure out its shita, comparing it to other shitos. At some point, I found the whole process dry and uninspiring. I asked Rav Lichtenstein about this. He told me that there is a theory in aesthetics that when a person experiences the awe of a work of art, and decides to study it in depth, he may temporarily lose the experience of beauty for this work. The theory states that in the long run, when he will take a step back to appreciate the painting as a whole, he will now have a much greater appreciation of the work than he did initially. Sometimes a person gets hispaalus from something, but then he needs yishuv hadaas to grasp it intellectually[2], and then he can get hispaalus from it again. (Rav Kook writes that hispaalus is bad for trying to grasp something. It is good as an experience or to help incorporate a chochma, that a person has already grasped intellectually, into his ratzon/perception.)


This is a major yesod of life in general, and learning in particular.

(The basic idea heard in the name of Rav Hershfeld, Rosh Yeshiva of Schapell's. The details filled in by me.)

[1] Rambam in intro to Moreh suggests a different model. He says that we sometimes have to learn incorrectly to reach the emmes. Therefore the model is: klal → prat →klal` (prime – perfected).
[2] Rav Yisroel Ohr 30 that need yishuv hadaas to understand things intellectually. Also hakdama to Ein Aya and Mussar Avicho.