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Parashat Devarim 5781 — 07/17/2021

Parashat Devarim 5781 — 07/17/2021

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.

Devarim 1:1 – 3:22
Sometimes when we try to trace the sources of somebody’s thought, we tend to overlook the fact that a person takes the ideas and currents that are available in the marketplace, and combines them and adds to them and synthesizes them into a new and unique system of thought – a product of his or her own creativity, life experiences and level of consciousness. This is the case with every one of us, how much more so a creative genius like Rambam.

Here is what Prof. Pines says:

It is more relevant from Maimonides’ point of view to note that the terminology and notional framework of Avicenna‘s doctrine tended to emphasize Gd’s remoteness from human conception. This is a cardinal point of Maimonides’ theology; it is also one of the most frequently cited, but it may not have the meaning and the implications usually ascribed to it.
According to Maimonides’ often expressed assertion, Gd should not be regarded as having any positive attributes pertaining to His essence and superadded to it; any positive attribute describing Him should be given a negative meaning (I 52, 55, 56, 57, 58). Thus His being characterized as wise or living merely signifies that He is not ignorant or dead, but has no reference at all to anything we can recognize as wisdom or life. This applies even to His existence, which beyond the homonymy has nothing in common with anything we conceive as existence (I 56). This is a radical doctrine and Maimonides obviously takes pains to place it in the foreground of his “divine science.” Now this negative theology was no intrinsic or important part of the traditional Aristotelian system. It does not play any conspicuous part in al-Fārābī’s doctrines. It does, however, in Avicenna‘s, and this fact may, as I believe, justify my discussing the problems involved in this particular context. It seems probable that it was Avicenna who conferred upon negative theology the philosophic reputability that made it possible for Maimonides to introduce it as the apparently central part of his, i.e., the philosophic, doctrine of Gd, in fact he lays even greater stress upon it and uses more radical formulas than Avicenna. For that matter, it may be taken as pretty certain that in formulating his views on this point Maimonides also used texts belonging to authors who, from the Aristotelian point of view, were much less respectable than Avicenna; thus, he may have utilized Neo-Platonic writings or perhaps even the book on The Duties of the Hearts of the Jewish mystic Bahya [ibn Paquda]. He manages, however, to give his negative theology a very personal touch. By affirming the absolute transcendence of Gd, it proposes to man the cosmos as his highest and main study.

Let’s start with the statement that Avicenna’s doctrine “tended to emphasize Gd’s remoteness from human conception.” Since Gd is transcendental to the world, He cannot be defined in terms of finite concepts. Any concept, clothed in a language, is necessarily a product of a finite mind, and therefore is inapplicable to Gd. Thus, we have Moshe Rabbeinu being told that no human being can “see Gd’s Face” and live. That means that we cannot know Gd’s essence; we can only know Gd insofar as He acts in the world and we can see this activity.

Rambam goes on to assert that we cannot know any of Gd’s attributes, and the names that we give to those attributes are to be understood only as “not-the-opposite” – we say Gd is a living Gd in order to say that Gd is not dead (Nietzsche notwithstanding).

I think that we run into this issue of “negative theology” because we are always directing our minds outward to the physical world, the world of objects, the finite creation. Generally, when we become aware of some “thing,” that thing is imprinted in our consciousness, overshadowing any experience of Pure Consciousness we might have. Our awareness is limited to boundaries, and the transcendent is hidden behind the boundaries. When we allow the mind to turn inward, instead of outward, and experience thought at progressively subtler levels, eventually transcending thought altogether, then the mind has the experience of unbounded Pure Consciousness. That is, in this case the mind identifies not with the object (which is a false identification), but with its own Self, which is Pure Consciousness. Pure Consciousness is aware of itself, as we have discussed over the past few weeks.

When Pure Consciousness is aware of itself, it has the role of the Knower, the Known and the processing of knowing, all within its own unified structure. Rambam discusses this in his consideration of Gd’s foreknowledge of everything vis-à-vis human free will. He gets out of the apparent contradiction by positing that Gd’s knowledge is different from human knowledge in that it is not separate from Gd Himself. We can understand this if we extrapolate from our experience of Pure Consciousness, which is a state of knowing-ness that is as certain and unchanging as Pure Consciousness itself is. While attempts to describe this state of knowing-ness may fall short, the experience of it is its own verification.

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Commentary by Steve Sufian

Parashat Devarim

Devarim can be translated as “words.”

Devarim begins with “and these are the words Moses spoke” and ends with “Do not fear them [other nations] for the Lord, your Gd, is fighting for you.”

As I began to think about “devarim”, words, I began to think about the letters that make up the words, the grammar that connects the words, and the different levels at which words, letters, and grammar exist and their connection to a life without fear in which we experience, without needing to be told, that Gd is fighting for us — and transforming our world into a world in which we have no enemies, neither outside our self nor inside our self. Not people, not thoughts or feelings, not storms or droughts or other acts of Nature.

And as I begin to think, I also began to feel the letters are souls. They are the fundamental expressions of Gd’s infinite vibration through which Gd’s Self-Referral Awareness manifests and un-manifests the limited world that we ordinary folk experience as reality, Since Gd is Infinite Love and Joy, the letters are also this and their shapes and sounds are only limited on the surface level of their appearance. At subtler levels, they are more and more subtle and unlimited in their forms and sounds.

And at the Transcendental level they completely weave one into the other and their shapes and sounds and qualities of Love and Joy are infinitely varying.

The Hebrew letters are called “otiyot.”  Yehudi Goldberg created a flowing exercise based on the shapes of the Hebrew letters and he it called it “Otiyot Chayot”: “Chai” means “life” and “Chayot” are a class of heavenly beings, described in Ezekial’s vision of the heavenly chariot.

As it is with the letters, so it is with the words, the Devarim, and sentences, this parshah and Torah as a whole.

Back to the physical level of the letters, there are 22 and there are 22 chromosomes in the DNA plus a Male and Female chromosome, which can relate to the long and short vowels. This gives us a clear sense of the role of the letters in the manifesting of physical reality.

Kabbalah makes similar combinations for letters and the physiology and for Torah and the physiology.

The words Moses spoke were basically a review of the 40 years in the wilderness and here, too, there is a fundamental unity in the symbolism of the words of the review.

The mention of “40” often occurs in Torah as a symbol of completeness and here it occurs as 40 years spent in the desert between leaving Egypt (Mitzraim: Restrictions) and preparing to enter Canaan (“Synchronicity, Integration”), the Promised Land. This put in my mind the Kabbalastic view of the 10 Sefiroth (qualities of Gd) times the four worlds (the world of Emanation: Atzilut; the world of Creation: Beriah; the world of Formation: Yetsirah; and the world of Action: Asiyah. This equals 40. And so when we experience the 10 qualities times the four worlds we have 40, a symbol of completeness.

“Forty” is used by Dr. Tony Nader, PH.D, MD, MARR, in showing the connection between the Veda and the Vedic Literature with human physiology, as a way of illustrating that our human body is not only flesh, bones, muscles and so on but in essence, it is Consciousness. “Consciousness” is a scientific way of referring to Totality, One without a Second, which from a religious point of view we refer to as Gd. Dr. Nader shows that 40 aspects of the Veda and its Literature correspond to 40 different aspects of our human body.

So by exploring, intellectually, emotionally, experientially, the words and letters, sentences, paragraphs, parshahs of Gd, the grammar of Gd, the different qualities of Gd in the different stages of manifestation (within Gd), we become capable of entering a world in which we directly experience that Gd is Totality, we are expressions of Gd within Gd, Gd goes before us, makes our path safe, transforms any possible enemies into friends and we live a life very unafraid, very aware that Gd is filling our life with Joy, Love, words and actions of truth.

Such a life is one in which we fulfill Gd’s command: “Be thou holy, for I am holy” and in which we “Love the Lrd, thy Gd, with all our heart, all our soul, all our might” and we “Love our neighbor as our self” and are loved by our neighbor the same way.

Such a life is a fulfilled life.

In our congregation there is a lot of Love and Joy, signs we are making good progress, signs we are experiencing a lot of protection and a lot of fulfillment.

Thank You, Gd, for all you do.
Thank You!
Thank You!
Thank You!
Baruch HaShem