Parashat Ki Tetze 5782 — 09/10/2022
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 21:10 – 25:18
Last week we ended our discussion of Torah speaks in the language of man and omnisignificance by pointing out that the two can be reconciled on the level of Pure Consciousness. The Veda is the record of the fundamental modes of vibration of Pure Consciousness within itself, and it can be cognized as a very specific sequence of sounds, which form expressions in Vedic Sanskrit. Thus, the Veda is expression in the language of man, and, since the sequence of the sounds is crucial to expressing the progressive nature of the finest level of nature, every sound is significant, as is the traditional way of chanting each word and each verse. We find that in fact, omnisignificance and language of man are complementary, not contradictory.
We then saw that this entire development is quite parallel to Jewish tradition’s view of Torah. Torah is Gd speaking to Himself, and Moses eavesdropping, as it were – that is, cognizing the virtual vibrations within Gd’s nature and expressing them as a sequence of sounds of the Hebrew language, which we have as Torah.
Indeed, Maharishi told a good friend of mine that “Veda and Torah in essence are one.” Yet they are very different sequences of sounds, and the Hebrew and Sanskrit languages apparently have little or no relationship to one another. How can both be the language of nature?
I’ll start with a personal story. In 1977 I was on an advanced TM course with my late colleague on the MIU Faculty, Doug White A”H. Doug was a scholar of Chinese literature; his doctoral dissertation at Harvard was on the I Ching. We got into a discussion of the name-form relationship in Sanskrit, and I pointed out that the same idea exists in Jewish tradition regarding Hebrew, and that since both were Scriptural languages there should be some way that both traditions could be valid. Doug argued that Sanskrit is Indo-European, the language family that includes the Slavic languages, Germanic languages (including English), the Romance languages, the Persian languages and the North Indian languages. Hebrew, on the other hand, is Semitic, which includes Aramaic, Arabic, Amharic and some others. Therefore, he asked, how could both languages be the “language of nature?” I had studied enough linguistics to agree with his line of reasoning, at least according to academic linguistics.
Shortly after we got back to MIU Doug sent me a paper (in an Inter-Office mail envelope, which dates this story!) describing a recently-discovered Hittite inscription. This inscription caused linguists to have to re-think the phonology of proto-Indo-European (Hittite was apparently an Indo-European language). Once they had worked it out, it turned out to be almost identical to proto-Semitic. This, of course, does not completely remove the problem that we have two very different languages that both appear to have the same relationship to Pure Consciousness, but it indicates that the idea I am about to offer may be a bit more plausible.
But first, some infrastructure. Maharishi described the decline of natural law as lived in the lives of the people, and the rise of different religions in this way:
Originally, at the beginning of each cycle (this is going to be a cyclical process), people are spontaneously living 100% in accord with natural law. That is, people were at a high enough level of consciousness that they could intuitively sense in every situation what action would be 100% life-supporting and evolutionary for themselves, their society and all creation. There was no need for any religion to bring people to Gd, because they all were living spontaneously in consciousness of Gd’s existence and Gd’s providence. Likewise, no codes of conduct were necessary because people spontaneously acted properly. There was no need to consult law books or reams of traditional knowledge – all the knowledge of natural law was available in everyone’s Consciousness and everyone could draw on that knowledge all the time.
With the passage of time, however, things begin to decay. Since living 100% natural law is so natural and effortless, people forgot that this state of life is kept lively through the process of transcending and contacting Pure Consciousness. The children were not taught to meditate, or perhaps were taught slightly improperly, and slowly the level of natural law lived in people’s daily lives began to drop. When the level of natural law drops from 100% to 75%, a great teacher arises and restores the knowledge. A code of conduct is promulgated that can keep behavior within appropriate boundaries, but it must be learned, as its spontaneous practice is not possible from the level of natural law being lived. It seems to me that those who do transcend during these times and attain Cosmic Consciousness will be able to live life 100% in accord with natural law. But as Maharishi once said, In a smoky room, even an enlightened man can’t see clearly. The general decline of the collective consciousness means that the experience of Pure Consciousness is not as clear, and higher states of consciousness are more difficult to reach.
As time goes on the process of degeneration picks up speed. At 50% natural law another teacher arises, and another religion begins to dominate, one that is simpler and easier to understand on a lower level of consciousness. Since the people’s connection to Gd has been weakened the religion has to be based more on faith, since the experience is harder to come by, and the knowledge of how to transcend has gotten weaker and has been replaced with practices that are less effective. At 25% natural law another religion arises and the degeneration continues until natural law gets to 0%. At this point nature cannot endure the strain being put on it and there is a revival of knowledge that brings the world back up to 100%.
I might point out that this scenario has its parallel in Jewish tradition:
- Human history begins with the Garden of Eden, a paradise where nature supplies everything to humans with no effort on their part.
- After the sin of Adam and Chava, living becomes an effort: “By the sweat of your brow will you eat bread.”
- The Talmud relates that the Patriarchs followed the entire Torah before it was given – living life in accord with natural law spontaneously and intuitively
- With time, a simpler form of Judaism evolved, according to the Talmud (Makkot 23b-24a): David came and reduced them [the mitzvot] to eleven … Isaiah came and established them as six … Micah came and established them as three … Isaiah returned and established them as two. Some say there is really only one mitzvah, to live by our faith. This is the ultimate in simplification!
- At the same time, as intuitive understanding of natural law declined, the code of Jewish law became more complex: The 10 commandments say Thou shalt not murder. The Mishnah comes to define what is murder, what is manslaughter, etc. The Gemara comes to explain exactly what the Mishnah means and give examples of practical rulings. Jewish law was then codified by great scholars like Rambam and R. Yosef Karo (author of the Shulchan Aruch ) and the development and ramifying and adjusting to new technologies and new challenges is ongoing, as we get further and further from an intuitive understanding of right and wrong.
- This degeneration with time is called yeridat hadorot – “the descent of the generations”
- At the “end of days,” when there is a generation that is completely righteous or a generation that is completely wicked, Mashiach will come and establish Gd’s reign on earth. Sin will be no more (everyone will be living 100% natural law spontaneously).
Putting this all together I would like to suggest the following. The Veda is the record of natural law in its purest form, cognized by the rishis of old. But just as, with time, the degree of natural law lived by people declined, so the ability to understand the Veda declined, and, as stress built up in the atmosphere, the ability to cognize the Veda in its purity also declined. By the time of Moshe Rabbeinu, even someone at his exalted level could only experience partial cognition – as if there was static, noise, in the transmission from Gd, speaking to himself, to Moshe, listening in. I suspect that the cognition Moshe Rabbeinu had was a projection of the full cognition onto a lower plane – one that was useful and could be lived in both his day and age as well as ours. And in fact, our tradition holds that on the celestial level, the level right before the transcendent, there is a Supernal Torah, written with black fire on white fire, of which the Torah we have is but a projection down to our earthy level. Perhaps that Supernal Torah is the Veda, and with the revival of the knowledge of transcending, we will all be privileged to enjoy it in its fullness.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Ki Tetze
In the Soncino Press Chumash, the one that we use in Beth Shalom, KI Tetze is translated as “when thou goest out.”
The parshah continues: “to battle against thy enemies and the Lrd shall deliver them into thy hands…”
This is a reminder that, literally, in battle, victory goes to those whom Gd supports; symbolically, that in any area of life, to be successful we need to align ourself with Gd’s will. Battle is never really battle: it is Wholeness restoring a part to its reality as a vibration of Wholeness.
This parshah gives at least 74 mitzvot, ways to align with Gd’s Will, out of the 613 given in Torah (chabad.org) and some unifying themes on the material level are kindness, integrity and purity—all themes which we can strive to live in our lives today in our marriages, business relations, relations with strangers. In the Full sense the theme is always: Wholeness is always expressing itself through us, through all souls, so as to restore Full Awareness to us.
The opening illustration is the case of the beautiful captive a soldier desires to take to wife.
The captive is to be given time to grieve and then marriage can take place. This is kindness.
If the soldier wishes to divorce the wife, then she shall be set free, not sold for money, not treated as a slave. This is kindness and integrity — she has been the wife, the relationship was entered into honestly (at least by the soldier — the woman’s rights have not been considered) and also honest relations: she not be treated as property, as a business commodity. The woman has to convert (whatever that meant in Biblical times) and if she refused, she had to be set free and not molested. The conversion had to be voluntary.
What does it mean symbolically? To me, “go out to battle” means, symbolically to extend Wholeness into specific details, desires, that have not yet become directed to Wholeness, absorbed in Wholeness.
A beautiful captive is a desire that is very appealing but doesn’t seem on the face of it to be aligned to my desire for teshuvah, for return to Primordial Oneness. It is a desire that needs to be given some time before we would act on it: perhaps after a while, we will see that the desire can fit into the routine things we do every day to deepen our experience of Teshuvah and to spread it into areas of our life, of life in general that it has not yet reached.
I wish for all of us that we will enjoy the ability to divorce, to let go desires that are not aligned with Gd, to transform the ones that have possibilities into ones that actually help us align with Gd, (“take them to wife”) and that we will arrive at a state where we experience that everything is Wholeness; there is no going out, there are no enemies, there is no battle, there are no captives and all the world is experienced as our Self, the Self — Gd.
Baruch HaShem.