Parashat Vayakhel 5785 – 03/22/2025 – Parashat Parah
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.
Shemot 35:1-38:20
We left off last week by comparing the Greek and Jewish views of time and history. I promised that we would continue by discussing Maharishi’s view of time and history from his translation and commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter 4, verse 1. He writes:
Time is a conception to measure eternity. Indian historians base their conception of time on eternal Being; for them eternity is the basic field of time.
To arrive at some conception of the eternal, the best measure will be the life-span of something that has the greatest longevity in the relative field of creation. This, according to the enlightened vision of Vyasa, is the Divine Mother, the Universal Mother, who is ultimately responsible for all that is, was and will be in the entire cosmos.
The eternity of the eternal life of absolute Being is conceived in terms of innumerable lives of the Divine Mother, a single one of whose lives encompasses a thousand life spans of Lord Shiva. One life of Lord Shiva covers the time of a thousand life spans of Lord Vishnu. One life of Lord Vishnu equals the duration of a thousand life spans of Brahma, the Creator. A single life span of Brahma is conceived in terms of one hundred years of Brahma; each year of Brahma comprises 12 months of Brahma, and each month comprises 30 days of Brahma. One day of Brahma is called a Kalpa. One Kalpa is equal to the time of fourteen Manus. The time of one Manu is called a Manvantara. One Manvantara equals 71 Chaturyugis. One Chaturyugi comprises the total span of four Yugas, i.e. Sat-yuga, Treta-Yuga, Dwapara-yuga and Kali-yuga. The span of the Yugas is conceived in terms of the duration of Sat-yuga. Thus the span of Treta-yuga is equal to three quarters of that of Sat-yuga; the span of Dvapara-yuga is half that of Sat-yuga, and the span of Kali-yuga one quarter that of Sat-yuga. The span of Kali-yuga equals 432,000 years of a man’s life.
For those of you who have already grabbed your calculator, relax, one lifetime of Mother Divine is 1.5458688 x 10^23 human years. A Kalpa is about 4.3 billion years, about a third of the “scientific” age of the universe, which is about 14 billion years (1.4 x 10^10). One lifetime of Mother Divine is thus about 10^13 times the age of the universe as far as science able to determine. That’s 10 million million times bigger! This is a much more expanded perspective on time than we normally think of.
There is a lot to unpack here. Maharishi describes some of the divisions of time as life spans. The shorter divisions are all multiples of the cycles of the 4 yugas (Chaturyugis; Chatur = 4). To me, a life span is a progressive concept, whereas a cycle is a more static concept. Now Maharishi has always been very clear that “the purpose of creation is the expansion of happiness,” and that the normal flow of nature is evolutionary. Modern physics, specifically non-equilibrium thermodynamics, bears out the latter point – an open system that has sufficient flow of energy and material through it will naturally evolve into more complex structures (think of the waves above a blacktop road in the desert’s summer heat for example). I have often wondered how one reconciles the two views, and the best I can come up with is that there are cycles of time, to be sure, but time doesn’t simply circle back upon itself – rather I visualize more of a helix, where each cycle comes back to a higher level of evolution. Whether there is an end to the process, I don’t know, but I would think there is probably no end, as the field of eternal Being, as Maharishi describes it, is a field of all possibilities, endlessly creative and endlessly moving onwards and upwards. This is my own speculation however. I’d love to hear other ideas.
The basis of all these considerations however is that Pure Consciousness is eternal – it is beyond time (and space). Leaving aside the extremely long time frames of some of the cycles we have looked at, eternity is infinite. Eternity is the nature of pure being. It is unchanging, silent. We get our sense of time from motion and change. The earth goes around the sun, which marks a year. The earth rotates on its axis, which marks a day. If there is no motion or change, there is no time. So where does time come from?
Maharishi describes the entire creation as the internal dynamics of consciousness. We have already discussed how the self-referral nature of Consciousness causes Consciousness to play the roles of both observer and observed, subject and object. This sets up an infinite, yet virtual, tension within Consciousness and it is the vibrations due to this tension that create everything in creation – including space and time. It also creates human beings, who can evolve to understand and experience that all of creation is patterns of virtual fluctuations within Consciousness. This fact, that human beings evolve, gives us an insight into the nature of time. First if we are evolving to a higher state, it follows that we are currently in a lower state, and the first quality of that lower state is that we are bound by time. In fact, the very nature of evolution implies change, and therefore time.
It comes out that time is actually a function of limited vision. Fully clarified vision sees silence permeating everything – in fact, one in Unity Consciousness sees that Consciousness is all that there is. The reality is, there is no time, there is no change, there is no evolution – there is just Consciousness displaying Itself to Itself in all its rich tapestry of possibilities. Our conception of creation in time is only as valid as the actual reality of creation. That reality differs in different states of consciousness, as we have seen.
I think that both creation at a point in time or infinite cycling of creation are artifacts of limited awareness. Both posit the reality of change, whether it be linear, circular or helical. Empirically, over the course of a few billion years, it seems that the creation-in-time model is best fitted to reality. Over the course of a lifetime of Mother Divine, many millions of millions of universe lifetimes, perhaps a cyclical model works better. The model that works best is perhaps the Hamlet model: The rest is silence.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Vayakhel
“Vayakhel” means “and he assembled.” This continues the theme we saw in Ki Tisa of revealing the detail in a group – as in taking a census which Gd commanded Moses to do – and in bringing parts together into a whole, as Gd did with assembling the essence of Torah as 613 mitzvot (commandments) into two tablets. This theme is the theme of Teshuvah – return to Oneness in which we experience all details of existence as assembled, organized within our Self, the Self.
Moses repeats to the assembly many of the details of the construction of the Tabernacle that Gd gave to him earlier (Parshah Terumah). This illustrates our responsibility to share what we learn, what is revealed to us, with others, with everyone.
Before he does this, though, he reminds the assembly of the importance of Sabbath, the day of complete rest. This reminder is appropriate here because it makes clear that even in doing Gd’s work, as in building the Tabernacle, the priority is rest and we should not feel that any other commandment from Gd revokes it. The commandment to not kindle a fire on the Sabbath is given as an illustration: “fire” symbolizes action, energy, passion, desire and so it can serve as a general illustration that rest means rest in every way – rest in which Oneness of which all diversity is expression is revealed as is the Nature of Oneness as Joy and Love.
Moses repeats Gd’s command that every generous-hearted person shall bring an offering of materials for the Tabernacle and for the priestly garments and that every wise-hearted person shall participate in making the Tabernacle out of the offerings. Although it would seem that generosity and wisdom go hand-in-hand, in this parshah those making offerings are at least to some degree separate from those assembling the offerings into the parts of the Tabernacle and the priestly garments: the generous are so generous that they continue making offerings even when enough material has been gathered. Moses has to tell them to stop. This illustrates that in society and within our personality there needs to be communication so that everything is just right, not too much, not too little.
The detail and extent to which Gd goes in describing the construction of the Mishkan and the priestly garments (13 chapters whereas the construction of the Universe is only given one) suggests to many, including me, there is deep symbolism – although I haven’t found any source that goes into the detail in detail – between the Mishkan and the Universe and the Mishkan and the human physiology and personality.
Although I have not found such an account, reading the chapters and listening to the chapters can help us tune into the Harmony within Gd/One and Gd’s Expressions within Gd – Universe, humans, all and all.
This tuning in can help us open to the reality of One, to experience directly that we are One and to live in completeness, Completeness. A word here, a phrase there – soon! Complete Restoration of Awareness.
Parashat Vayakhel, all 13 parshahs detailing the Mishkan/Tabernacle/Sanctuary, all of Torah is available online, both in English and Hebrew and in written and audio form. chabad.org is an example of their availability.
Let’s take advantage, as we can, of the great gift of Torah and our religion as aids in restoring our awareness to Full Awareness. One.
Baruch HaShem.