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Parashat Emor 5783 — 05/06/2023

Parashat Emor 5783 — 05/06/2023

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.

Vayikra 21:1-24:23

The next word that Rambam considers is lev / “heart.” In the West, we see the heart as the seat of the emotions, but in Jewish thought, and perhaps in medieval thought generally, the heart is the seat of thought – “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart …” In the liturgy of the 10 Days of Repentance we find that Gd searches out the “ruminations of kidneys and heart,” the kidneys being the seat of counsel, or advice – perhaps decision-making, while the heart is, again, the seat of thought. The heart is also the seat of desire: “the eyes see and the heart desires” (see Rashi to Numbers 15:39). Here is what Rambam says:

Heart [lev] is an equivocal term. It is a term denoting the heart, I mean the part of the body in which resides the principle of life of every being endowed with a heart. Thus: And thrust them ln the heart of Absalom (II Sam 18:4). And inasmuch as this part is in the middle of the body, the term is used figuratively to designate the middle of every thing. Thus: Unto the heart of heaven (Deut 4:11); The heart of fire (Ex 3:2). It is also a term denoting thought. Thus: Went not my heart (II Kings 5:26), which means that thou wast present in my thought when this and that happened. In this sense it is said: And that ye go not about after your own heart (Num 15:39 – this is part of the third paragraph of the Shema), which refers to your following your thoughts; and: Whose heart turneth away this day (Deut 29:17),” which means that his thought is discontinued.

In English the expression “his thought is discontinued” sounds a bit strange. I believe it is a translation of the Hebrew term hesech hada’at, which literally means “diversion of the mind.” There are occasions where hesech hada’at has practical implications. For example, when you wash your hands prior to eating a meal with bread, you’re not supposed to speak between washing because you’re supposed to keep your attention on your hands so they don’t inadvertently touch anything impure. If your attention is diverted, you’re supposed to wash again. When praying, ideally one’s full attention is on the prayers. In some cases, if one’s attention gets diverted in the middle of the prayer, one must repeat the prayer. Nowadays, most of these rules have fallen into desuetude (wonderful word, here‘s what it means), because nobody is able to focus their mind so completely that it never wanders, even a little bit.

I finally understood the concept of hesech hada’at when I was driving down the freeway. I always check my driver’s side mirror to see if a car is coming up to pass me. If I see that there is one car about to pass, then I know that once he passes, there is nobody in my blind spot, at least for a while, so I check often. But in between, I can pull out into the left-hand lane to pass someone else, if need be. If, however, my mind got distracted and I didn’t check the mirror, all bets are off – someone could have gotten into the blind spot while my mind was elsewhere and I wouldn’t have known. Hesech hada’at can be deadly!

What we are most interested in of course is maintaining awareness of Gd. We don’t want our heart to turn away from Gd – we want every aspect of our life to be infused with Gd! Connection with Gd is connection with bliss and is the ultimate goal of our existence. So why does our heart turn away from Gd? From the religious point of view we would say it is due to our sins, and from the Vedic Science point of view we would say it is stress. What is the connection between sin and stress? Sin is action against natural law / Will of Gd. It is action that causes strain in the individual doing it, and strain in the environment. This strain stresses the individual nervous system and the fabric of society. Whichever language we use, sin / stress dulls the nervous system and inhibits us from perceiving subtle impulses of creation, let alone the transcendent. Think of it as creating static in the nervous system that drowns out the faintest signals, or, alternatively, it makes the nervous system stiff and unresponsive (like an overstretched slinky) which is not flexible and supple enough to pick up these faint impulses. What then happens is it is harder for us to perceive Gd’s Will in any given situation, or to apply Gd’s instructions that He has given us in Scripture, and we perform further wrong action, which further degrades our ability to act properly.

The solution to this problem is to bring the mind into direct contact with the transcendent. This “dip in the ocean of consciousness” purifies the mind and body, as we have discussed a number of times, making the nervous system more and more supple and allowing us to act more and more spontaneously in accord with natural law. As this happens, we pick up less stress from both the environment and from our own actions; alternatively, we sin less and less. The pace of our progress increases, until our nervous system is thoroughly purified, and all our actions are in accord with natural law. This is the state of Cosmic Consciousness, where Pure Consciousness is an ever-present background to all of our activity, waking, dreaming and sleeping. In Cosmic Consciousness we are connected to the infinite all the time – this is the state where there is no hesech hada’at. We are one-pointedly attached to infinity, while we are acting in the world of change, the world of time, space and objects. I think this is the deep meaning of the Scriptural expression that Rambam quotes – we are no longer one whose heart turneth away from Gd.

I would emphasize that Cosmic Consciousness is a state of consciousness that is lived spontaneously once the nervous system is fully purified and can sustain Pure Consciousness along with activity. It is not a mood or feeling that can be cultivated by mere imaginings or thinking about it. It is alternation of the experience of Pure Consciousness and waking, dreaming and sleeping that cultures the nervous system to sustain this experience naturally.

We’ll continue our consideration of the heart next week Gd willing.

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Commentary by Steve Sufian

Parashat Emor

“Emor” means “speak”: Gd commands Moses to speak to the sons of Aaron and to Aaron, Gd’s Voice speaking through an individual to a group, just as each Sound of Torah is an Individual Sound vibrating within the Whole, which is Gd. Repeatedly in Torah Gd has said “Be thou holy for I am Holy”. In this parshah, we see Gd’s commands about the nature of Holiness, purity. And “speech” is Speech, Gd’s Speech, when it is Pure.

The overall context of Emor is that it is a parshah in “Torah,” a Vibration of Gd, the Liveliness of Gd, Gd Speaking within Gd to Gd but passing through Moses to our ancestors and today available to us in books, scrolls, recitations, recording. Most important, it is available to us in our Awareness when our Heart is open.

Since Gd has no beginning or end, “Beresheit Bara Elokim,” the first words of Torah, cannot be “In the beginning, Gd created,” but “in the beginning of Gd’s revealing,” the beginning and the revealing to be found in every point of Gd, everywhere in Gd’s Speech. This means that Gd plays hide-and-seek within Gd – the unlimited, omniscient, pretends to be limited and a seeker of knowledge, of wisdom. To this role of Gd, Gd reveals the Nature of the process through which Gd appears to be void and then within the void, Gd reveals the range from apparent emptiness to Fullness, a ladder in time, a sequence which is a cycle through which we find the emptiness within the detail and the detail within the emptiness.

This description shows us how each action of ours begins with our becoming aware of the silence of our awareness, the Self-Referral level of our awareness, always fulfilled, and unfolds more and more concrete and wide-ranging manifestations as increasing awareness of the gap between our Self-Referral level of awareness and our individual awareness produces a desire of ours perform actions that will narrow and eliminate the gap and restore our individual awareness to Self-Referral Awareness, Total Awareness.

Parashat Emor shows four groups of commands that reveal the detail within the word “speak. It continues the Book of Leviticus: “Leviticus” derives from “Levi,” attached, pledge to Gd. This is specifically referring to the Levites, the priests, who attached and pledged themselves to Gd during their service when the Mishkan and the Temples stood.

At any time, and certainly today, whether we are Levites or not, we pledge and attach ourselves to Gd, through not only our actions and our daily prayers, ideally through what we learned (and continue) to learn through our religion, but certainly through any innocent prayer for Gd to reveal to us Gd’s Will and give us the purity to do It so that every action of ours is innocent, kind and loving narrows the gap between our small self and our Big Self and attaches ourself to Gd.

The essence of Gd’s Will is that we should “Love the Ld thy Gd with all thy heart, all thy soul and all thy might” and “shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”  Gd may be a bit abstract but our neighbor is concrete and so something simple like helping a friend, a family member, or a stranger; something complex like doing a large project for an international organization or business that we feel is helping our world to become more pure helps us move in the direction of loving Gd.

Prayer, the ideal speech, in Judaism is much more a recognition of the Blessedness, the Blissfulness of Gd, than it is a request for something. Our actions allow this Blessedness to increase in our awareness and flow through us when they are not just for our individual self but for the community, for the Harmony of Life.

The commands in Parshah Emor can be divided into four sections:

  1. The commands about purity of the Kohanim, the priests who are direct descendants of Aaron, himself of the tribe of Levi.
  2. Establishing Festivals and the Sabbath – times when there are special rules to be pure and celebrate purity
  3. Lighting the menorah – light that symbolizes the victory of purity over impurity.
  4. Penalties for blasphemy, murder, destruction of property – very clear descriptions of actions to avoid so that we remain pure, grow in purity, act with love and do not suffer or cause suffering.

In the beginning of Parashat Emor, we see Gd, Who is Holy, Speaking to Moses, an open channel for his speech and a good model for us to help us act so that we are holy as Gd is Holy.

In the conclusion of the parshah, we see the consequences of blasphemous speech, speech which moves away from Holiness rather than toward it. The penalty was stoning to death. This is certainly not the penalty today but the penalty at any time is that with blasphemous speech our nerves and heart become hard, like stone, and little by little, if we do not return to purity, we stone ourselves to a joyless life, to suffering, to death of our spirit, and eventually, to death of our bodies. This is a very good reason to speak in praise of Gd and to speak encouragingly to all, encouraging all to act purely so they return to Wholeness.

Parashat Emor is a good one to read aloud or silently, to listen to, to act on so that we continue to speak holiness and to act in holiness.

Baruch HaShem