Parashat Toledot 5784 — 11/18/2023
Beginning with Bereishit 5781 (17 October 2020) we embarked on a new format. We will be considering Rambam’s (Maimonides’) great philosophical work Moreh Nevukim (Guide for the Perplexed) in the light of the knowledge of Vedic Science as expounded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The individual essays will therefore not necessarily have anything to do with the weekly Torah portion, although certainly there will be plenty of references to the Torah, the rest of the Bible, and to the Rabbinic literature. For Bereishit we described the project. The next four parshiyyot, Noach through Chayei Sarah, laid out a foundational understanding of Vedic Science, to the degree I am capable of doing so. Beginning with Toledot we started examining Moreh Nevukim.
Bereishit 25:19-28:9
I was asked to speak with a member of the Fairfield community about the relationship between Jewish practice and Maharishi’s teaching. I promised them I’d write something up, but didn’t realize how long it would be. Here is part III.
Some thoughts about Jewish practice and Vedic Science — Part 3
Shabbat
Before going into some of the specifics of Shabbat I’d like to make a couple of comments about mitzvot in general. The root of the word mitzvah has the connotation of a signpost. Now a signpost can have two functions: (1) it can indicate the path to be travelled (“Jerusalem 50 km”) and (2) it can mark a place (“On this spot in 1789 George Washington tripped over a stray cat!”). In the same way, I think the mitzvot have two purposes. On the path, performance of the mitzvot helps us get closer to Gd – they are signposts that tell us which way to go to get to our destination. When we are at the destination of intimate closeness to Gd, we perform Gd’s Will spontaneously – and Gd’s Will, for us, is the mitzvot. Perhaps we can say that we reach the level of Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akov who observed the entire Torah before it was given, intuitively.
Incidentally, I think a very similar point can be made of the TM-Sidhi program. Each sutra enlivens a particular part of the brain, and the full suite is thus a path to enlightenment. But once we are enlightened, we manifest the different sidhis in their fullness – manifesting the sidhis is thus a signpost of our having reached the goal of human development.
Achad ha’Am (Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg; 18 August 1856 – 2 January 1927) famously said, “More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.” The word “kept” has the connotation here of “guarding.” So, Shabbat observance guards us individually and as a people. I think we can understand this on a number of different levels. On the surface level, Shabbat sets us apart from the other peoples in the world. (Even those religions that have a Sabbath borrowed it from us and changed it to meet their needs.) Having a unique practice like Shabbat (and other mitzvot) binds the individual to the community, and strengthens the community itself.
On a deeper level, Shabbat provides a break from the outer-directed activities of the work week, and gives us the opportunity to spend more time in prayer and Torah learning, going inward and connecting to our spiritual self, which is our real self. This period of time to reset ourselves, to refresh ourselves in mind and body, allows us to go back into the work week with greater energy and clarity to meet whatever challenges we may have to face.
This latter protection is writ large if we go to an even deeper level. The root meaning of the word Shabbat means “to cease” or “to stop.” During the practice of the TM technique, the activity of the mind settles down, and can then experience Transcendental Consciousness, where all activity has ceased. As Patanjali puts it, Yogash chitta-vritti nirodhah / Yoga (the state of union, i.e. Transcendental Consciousness) is the complete settling of the activity of the mind (I:2). This state of unity with the source of nature and the home of all the laws of nature allows us to function in a way that is life-supporting to ourselves and our environment, and this protects us from negative forces “out there.”
If a sufficient fraction of a society is transcending, the level of natural law being lived by that society becomes sufficient that outside forces cannot disrupt the structural integrity of the society. There have been several studies that support this assertion. So, if we have enough people “keeping Shabbat,” in the sense of “ceasing the fluctuations of the mind” through TM, then the whole society is protected. This connection between Shabbat and protection through doing Gd’s Will is echoed throughout Scripture and the Rabbinic literature. “If Israel would keep two Shabbatot they would instantly be redeemed” (Shabbat 118a).
So how do we observe Shabbat? The commandment to observe Shabbat is so fundamental that it is one of the 10 Commandments. However, there is a subtle difference between the two versions of the commandment. In Exodus, Parashat Yitro, in the description of the revelation, it says Zachor et Yom haShabbat / Remember the Sabbath Day. This is a positive commandment and the Rabbis elaborate and prescribe things we are supposed to do in honor of the Sabbath: Making kiddush, eating fine meals, wearing our best clothes, extended prayers with the more dour ones removed. In Moshe Rabbeinu’s recapitulation in Parashat v’EtChanan it says: Shamor et Yom haShabbat / Guard the Sabbath Day. According to the Rabbinic understanding, this refers to all the negative commandments of the Sabbath: refraining from work, from cooking, from creative activity in general. We go inward (positive/ zachor) and we stop going outward (negative/ shamor). The tradition is that Gd spoke both shamor and zachor simultaneously, to indicate that proper observance of the Shabbat includes both aspects, going inward and refraining from going outward, and that the two aspects are intimately intertwined.
It does take a bit of getting used to preparing for the Shabbat restrictions, making sure the lights are set properly, cooking in advance, etc. But as the sun sets and the cares of the week fall away, one is ushered into what the Rabbis called “a taste of the world to come.” Indeed, by detaching ourselves to the extent possible from the activity of the world, we are practicing, as it were, being in higher states of consciousness. In most cases where the Sabbath is mentioned, it says “six days shall you work.” In one case it says, “six days shall work be done” (Lev 23:3). Shabbat is a way for us to give up ownership of activity to nature, where it belongs, and witness everything being done on its own, while we just witness.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Toledot
“Toledot” means “generations, descendants”. More basic than the literal meaning is the meaning “stages of evolution.” We will look at this parshah from this point of view
The parshah begins with “and these are the generations of Isaac” and tells the story of Isaac’s sons, Jacob and Esau from whom generations will be born, and of Gd’s promise to Isaac that if Isaac will follow Gd, as did Isaac’s father Abraham, then his descendants will be multiplied “like the stars of the heavens” and the land and all nations will be blessed by Isaac’s descendants. “Heaven” symbolizes “Wholeness” and “stars” symbolize the details of Wholeness, the details through which Heaven sends its grace to human and all beings. Similarly, “land” symbolizes “Wholeness” and “nations” symbolizes the details of Wholeness.
On the surface of this parshah, we see competition, deception, favoritism: Isaac and Rebecca do not seem to have been good parents, skilled and effective in raising two sons to be whole, complete.
It’s common to say that Esau, “a man of the fields,” symbolizes the outer field of life, the physical, while Jacob, “a quiet person, sitting in tents,” symbolizes the inner field of life, the spiritual.
Often people see a battle taking place between these two people and these two aspects of life, but life, to be Life, needs to have both physical and spiritual and they need to be integrated.
¬Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental Meditation Program said that Ananda, Total Joy (in Hebrew, Simchah), is everyone’s birthright.
Looking at the story of Jacob asking Esau to sell him his birthright for some porridge he was making, it occurred to me that Jacob, symbolizing the Spiritual aspect of Life, was asking Esau, symbolizing the Physical aspect of Life, to end his famished state by surrendering his commitment to the Physical Alone, and opening himself to the spiritual porridge Jacob was cooking.
Porridge has a bubbly quality to it and cooking it seems equivalent to revealing that Ananda/Joy/Unified Field/Sameach Gd, has a texture: it is not just flat, it has a bubbly quality.
So rather than Jacob cheating Esau, acting cruelly, Jacob was actually enlivening the Joy in Esau, ending his famishment, by taking from him his false birthright in the Physical, and giving him his real birthright, in Ananda, Gd.
Similarly, when Toledot tells us that Esau, the man of the fields, was Isaac’s favorite we can see that Isaac was unable to integrate the spiritual with the physical and so he was not able to live with Wholeness, the integration of the spiritual and the material. We can see this very clearly when Toledot also tells us that Isaac became blind: what greater blindness than to be unaware of Wholeness.
For Rebecca to deceive Isaac by dressing Jacob so that he seemed like the hairy Esau might seem like favoritism on Rebecca’s part but Esau had already sold his physical birthright to Jacob and so what Rebecca was doing was creating an integration of spirituality with materiality, an integration that would raise the generations to increasing higher levels of integration.
Later in Torah we see a very high step in this integration and Restoration of Awareness to Jacob’s descendants when at Mt. Sinai, all of the nation of Israel hears Gd speak, something unmatched in any other scripture.
Still, hearing Gd speak from a distance is an experience of the duality between Gd and humanity: Full Restoration of Awareness means going beyond this duality and experiencing the Oneness which is All.
Toledot reminds us that we need to live balanced, integrated lives, making sure that our material needs are nourished by our spiritual development so that we go beyond duality of any kind and experience duality and all multiplicity within the Oneness that is our real Nature: The All-in-All.
Reading, reciting, hearing, discussing Torah, the Siddur (prayerbook) and their supplements and commentaries and acting with their Wisdom is an excellent way to do this. Getting together with our community, with our World Family, is an excellent way to do this; excellent ways to increase our Joy and Wholeness by sharing, by integrating the multiplicity of life so that we experience the Wholeness with its details.
Let’s continue easily, gently, innocently doing this.
Baruch HaShem