Parashat Chayei Sara 5782 — 10/30/2021
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.
Bereshit 23:1-25:18
Rambam writes about the different levels of insight different people have. First, he comments on how much perplexity he can actually dispel for a person:
I do not say that this Treatise will remove all difficulties for those who understand it. I do, however, say that it will remove most of the difficulties, and those of the greatest moment. A sensible man thus should not demand of me or hope that when we mention a subject, we shall make a complete exposition of it, or that when we engage in the explanation of the meaning of one of the parables, we shall set forth exhaustively all that is expressed in that parable. An intelligent man would be unable to do so even by speaking directly to an interlocutor.
The reason that the Sages spoke in parables of course is only partly due to the necessity of hiding dangerous knowledge from the ignorant. The other, more important reason, is that they were describing the infinite, eternal, unbounded reality underlying all of creation. This reality transcends time, space, objects, motion – everything finite. Therefore, we cannot use finite expressions to describe it or define it. This is the main reason for Rambam’s use of “negative theology,” as we discussed earlier. Anything positive we might want to say about Gd will be limiting, which of course is therefore not an accurate or truthful statement about Gd. All we can say is Gd is not dead – we can’t say that Gd is alive because alive/dead is a duality that has no place within Gd’s Unity.
So, we use parables, analogies that capture some sense of the reality. To those who have the direct experience of the Unity of existence, the parables make the most sense, all the while that they are aware that only a portion of the wholeness is being captured. To those on a lower level, the parables convey some flavor of the reality. On another level, the parables have to be explained, which means more words and more finitude being imposed on the infinite. On the lowest level, people take the parables literally, which strips virtually all meaning from them.
Maharishi gave a very interesting talk on the Brahma Sutras (a part of the Vedic literature) that is relevant to this point. Disclaimer: I am reporting from my memory and am responsible for any inaccuracies in the following description. Brahman is Wholeness of life, the basis of life and the basis of our consciousness. This Wholeness is all-pervasive, all that there is. The point of the Brahma Sutras is to describe this Wholeness in its fullness. Maharishi described the structure of the work in the following terms. We start out with a sutra that purports to describe Wholeness. The next sutra finds something missing in the description and fills it in. The next sutra finds something missing in the second and fills that in. This continues until the last sutra, and what is missing is filled in by the first sutra. The Brahma Sutras stitch (“suture,” from the same root as sutra) together the fabric of Wholeness.
So, the Brahma Sutras as a whole describe or model Wholeness – at least for those who, like Maharishi can understand them from the level of Wholeness. For everyone else the Brahma Sutras will resonate and I believe stimulate the growth of consciousness, to the extent that we have developed our consciousness already. This is a kind of parallel to the different levels of understanding of the parables that Rambam describes. I don’t know of any part of the Rabbinic literature that has a structure like the Brahma Sutras, but that does not mean it doesn’t exist. It may also be part of an oral tradition that has never been committed to writing.
Rambam continues:
You should not think that these great secrets are fully and completely known to anyone among us. They are not. But sometimes truth flashes out to us so that we think that it is day, and then matter and habit in their various forms conceal it so that we find ourselves again in an obscure night, almost as we were at first. We are like someone in a very dark night over whom lightning flashes time and time again. Among us there is one for whom the lightning flashes time and time again, so that he is always, as it were, in unceasing light. Thus, night appears to him as day. That is the degree of the great one among the prophets, to whom it was said: But as for thee, stand thou here by Me, and of whom it was said: that the skin of his face. sent forth beams, and so on. Among them there is one to whom the lightning flashes only once in the whole of his night; that is the rank of those of whom it is said: they prophesied, but they did so no more. There are others between whose lightning flashes there are greater or shorter intervals. Thereafter comes he who does not attain a degree in which his darkness is illumined by any lightning flash. It is illumined, however, by a polished body or something of that kind, stones or something else that give light in the darkness of the night. And even this small light that shines over us is not always there, but flashes and is hidden again, as if it were the flaming sword which turned every way. It is in accord with these states that the degrees of the perfect vary. As for those who never even once see a light, but grope about in their night, of them it is said: They know not, neither do they understand; They go about in darkness. The truth, in spite of the strength of its manifestation, is entirely hidden from them, as is said of them, and now men see not the light which is bright in the skies. They are the vulgar among the people.
Here Rambam is clearly describing different levels of development of consciousness from the fully enlightened person with all stress having been released from their body, and able to have a continuous experience of the transcendent along with normal waking, dreaming and sleeping states of consciousness, to someone who has flashes of experience of the transcendent, at greater or shorter intervals, to one who does not experience the transcendent at all. Next week I’d like to discuss this phenomenon of intermittent experience of the transcendent and see if we can tie it together with the first part of this installment.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Chayei Sara
After Sarah passes, with Gd’s Presence in her as it was and is in Abraham, Abraham sends his servant, Eliezer, to look for a spouse for his son, Isaac.
What qualities would we want in a servant who we send to an unfamiliar world to select a spouse for our beloved child?
What strategy would the servant use to select exactly the right spouse?
Abraham sends his trusted servant Eliezer to look for a wife for his son Isaac.
Eliezer’s name means “Help of my Gd”: Eliezer is servant of Gd first, Abraham second.
This is the perfect quality we want in a servant: the servant will act according to Gd’s Will and our desire will be fulfilled in alignment with Gd’s Will.
Abraham, therefore, trusts not only Eliezer’s loyalty but his competence — his competence in zeroing in on the right bride and his judgment in making sure the bride really is the right bride.
Eliezer’s strategy is not to stay within his limited ability but to ask Gd for guidance. As he approaches a well in the country to which he is sent he prays in his heart that Gd will bring a woman to the well who will offer to give him not only a drink from her pitcher that he asks for but also that she will offer to provide water for his camels also, even without his asking. Eliezar values generosity as a sign of love and appropriateness.
Before he even finishes this prayer, a woman appears who fulfills his request.
This a sign of considerable purity in Eliezer and also in the woman, who is Rebekah and who becomes Isaac’s wife.
Rebekah leads Eliezer to her family and Eliezer explains his mission: to find a bride for his master Abraham’s son, Isaac.
“Will you marry him?” his family asks.
“Yes, I will”, Rebekah replies, a sign not only of generosity but of her own judgment that Eliezer is connecting her with the love that Gd intends for her, a marriage that will enable her to be not only a good and happy wife, but a good servant of Gd.
“Will you leave tomorrow?” Eliezer asks.
“Yes, I will”, Rebekah replies, a sign of trust.
And when Rebekah meets Isaac, they love each other and Isaac is comforted for the loss of his mother, proof that Eliezer was a good and competent servant, one who fulfilled his master’s wishes, one to whom Gd responds even before the wish of his heart is completely stated.
In our lives we do our best “to love Gd with all our heart and soul” and “to love our neighbor as our self” so that we are good servants of ourselves, our families, our communities and Gd and also, we are trusting recipients of Gd’s messengers and servants.
We do our best to be trustworthy, competent, loving, generous and to welcome in the Shekinah, Gd’s bride, not only on Shabbat but every moment and to be Gd’s bride ourselves. And beyond this quality, we seek to restore ourselves and to be restored to the Oneness, within which the duality of Gd and us exists. This is the marriage of the self to the Self and the marriage of the Self to the Self.
Not only the meaning of this parshah helps us in this delightful activity but even more fundamentally, the sound.
Here is Rabbi Michael Slavin, from the Chabad Brooklyn central synagogue, where the Lubavitcher Rebbe presided, reading “Chayei Sarah”:
Chayei Sarah Audio Recording