"Without revelation," begins Proverbs 29:18, "the people perish."  so says the King James Version of the Hebrew Bible.  What does this mean?  Most of us spend our lives looking for insight, vision, enlightenment, and meaning.  We want to understand our lives and what they are about.  Or as Aristotle put it long ago, "All people wish to know."
     And how do we know?  We only know as far as our vision extends.  Beyond that, we can know very little.  Most of us are aware, however, that there are things that are out "there," but things that we do not necessarily grasp or understand.  If we are honest, we will admit that mysteries and unknowns flow through existence, mysteries that we may never fully understand.
     Maybe these mysteries are the stuff of existence.  Maybe they are part of our present reality.  Maybe that's all they are.  But maybe, just maybe, they represent something that exists but which we do not see, visibly, in this material reality, something that, somehow, though it is "beyond" this reality, interacts with it in a way that explains it, that explains its mysteries and why they exist.
     Hence, revelation, that is, communication from this "something" beyond us, this "something," this, dare I say, God,  that is somehow able to more fully frame our perception of our lives.  In ourselves, we cannot know everything about ourselves or our lives.  We cannot look at them as a disinterested observer.
     But revelation can.  It is outside us, yet it speaks to us.  It lets us see reality as it really is.