Parashat Ki Tisa 5782 — 02/19/2022
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.
Shemot 30:11-34:35
We have been discussing the concept of cause and effect and its theological implications. Although it seems intuitively obvious that the world runs according to regular laws, and indeed science is based on the idea that the universe is regular in its behavior. Nonetheless, if the universe is absolutely regular, there would be no room for free will – either ours or Gd’s. Miracles would be impossible. Gd would be constrained by the very structure He created.
In Rambam’s time, one approach to this conundrum was to posit that the universe is created moment by moment according to Gd’s Will and any kind of regularity we perceive is either an artifact of the way Gd chooses to sequence His creations, or else a series of thoughts implanted in our minds every time we are created anew. We find this idea in our liturgy when we say, “He renews in His goodness every day the work of Creation.” And Bertrand Russell points out that there is no way to prove that the universe was not created 5 minutes ago (presumably looking like it is 13 billion years old). Even the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who had training as both an engineer and a mathematician, opined that Gd might have created the world 5700 years ago to look like it was millions or billions of years old. To his credit, the Rebbe quickly realized that this was a cheap, and unprovable one way or the other, way out of the problem of reconciling Biblical chronology and scientific understanding, and quickly retracted.
All these efforts predate much of our understanding of modern physics, which has some remarkable insights into the nature of causality. As is usually the case with modern physics, the results are spectacularly unintuitive, if our intuition is limited to human-size regimes of time, space, velocity and energy. I’d like to start with Relativity Theory, which Einstein developed in the early 1900’s (1905 – Special Relativity, 1915 – General Relativity).
Special Relativity redefined our notion of space and time. It deals with the relationship between the measurements that two different people who are in constant speed motion with respect to one another. While the laws of nature are the same for both observers, the specific measurements of the location and timing of events may differ between them. In particular, two events which are simultaneous for one observer may not be simultaneous for the other. In fact, event A may be before event B for observer 1, while B precedes A for observer 2. It should be clear that event A cannot cause event B nor event B event A. This is because embedded in our notion of causality is the notion of time sequence. If A is prior to B, A can cause B (although it may not – post hoc ergo prompter hoc is a very common logical fallacy). But if different observers on which event came first, there can be no causal connection between them. Otherwise, we have a logical fallacy – I could, theoretically, go back in time and prevent my parents from having children, which would erase me from history, leaving the question, “Who prevented Mom and Dad from having children?!”
Fortunately, the only scenario in Special Relativity in which the time sequence of events A and B is different for different observers occurs when A and B are separated in space and time in such a way that no signal can pass between the two. The speed of signaling is limited by the speed of light in a vacuum. If, for any one observer, light cannot travel between events A and B, because they are too far apart for the time available, then this will be the case for every observer. Therefore, causality cannot depend on which observer is measuring the two events, as we expect, and this kind of time travel is not possible. When we consider quantum entanglement, we will see that the idea that signal cannot exceed the speed of light may not be as rock-solid as we thought it was, but for now, causality has been saved.
I should point out that these Relativistic effects only show up when the two observers are moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light with respect to one another. Light speed is 186,000 miles per second, and at 90% of light speed (163,400 mps) the Relativistic effect is about 56%.
When we move into General Relativity, the picture becomes even stranger. General Relativity is a theory of gravity. It describes gravity not as a force, but as a curvature of spacetime – the unified space and time of Special Relativity is no longer a flat, Euclidean geometry, but a curved manifold, like the surface of a sphere. Objects moving in the straightest possible paths on this curved “surface” appear to be freely falling in a gravitational field. The degree of curvature is given by the amount of mass-energy in the region. In the words of Prof. John Archibald Wheeler, “Curved spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.” Space and time, which were once the arena in which physics played itself out, now are part of the dynamics of the universe.
While this shift is fascinating in and of itself, I want to focus on two predictions of General Relativity that shed some light on causality. The first is the phenomenon of black holes. Black holes form when the mass-energy density in a region is so great that all the matter is drawn together tighter and tighter until it collapses into a single point of infinite density, a singularity. Spacetime becomes so twisted that it comes to a point, rather than being a smooth manifold. In fact, the twisting is so intense that light cannot escape the black hole (hence its name).
There is a certain radius around the black hole, called the event horizon, such that nothing, not even a speed-of-light photon, can escape from within this distance to any place outside it. Therefore, no signal can come from “inside” a black hole and be the cause of anything outside the black hole. Furthermore, within the event horizon time and space become “switched” in a way such that “in” towards the center of the black hole becomes “future” – that is, later in time. As if you weren’t doomed already!
Despite the impossibility of any signal’s coming out of the black hole, we can detect its presence by its gravitational effect (we can measure – from a safe distance! – its mass and angular momentum) and its static electrical effect (we can measure its electrical charge). Both gravity and electromagnetism are long-range forces and therefore we don’t have to be subatomic distances away to feel their effects, as opposed to the strong and weak nuclear forces, which operate on nuclear scales. It is understandable how mass and angular momentum, which affect the curvature of spacetime, can curve spacetime at great distances. How that works with charge, however, I don’t know. The electrical force is mediated by photons, and, as we have seen, photons can’t escape a black hole.
These questions are of little practical relevance, since the gravitational force near a black hole would rip anything material to shreds, including our bodies and any measuring instruments we might care to use to probe the black holes. Nonetheless, black holes are apparently real and their existence and properties may have measurable consequences on the cosmic scale. Next week I want to look at some of the more cosmic predictions of General Relativity, before moving on to quantum mechanics, and eventually tying both fields to Vedic Science.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Ki Tisa
“Ki Tisa” means “when you take.” The parshah begins with “The Lrd spoke to Moses saying, ‘When you take the sum of the Children of Israel according to their numbers, let each one give to the Lrd an atonement for his soul when they are counted so there will be no plague among them when they are counted.’”
This brings us several important points about our drawing on Torah as a help in our return to Oneness, Teshuvah.
The first is that taking a census is a way of revealing that a community is not just a mass of people: each one matters, each one is to be known.
The second is that taking is not just something that Moses was commanded to do so that he would know the community in detail but also something that showed to every member of community that they mattered.
The third is that this principle of knowing the details of the community applies to knowing anything, anyone, including knowing Gd – and it applies not only to Moses but to everyone at all times.
Fourth is that, having shown they matter to Gd, they need to show that Gd matters to them: they need to make a donation as “an atonement for their soul,” a donation to dissolve any impurity that clouds their soul so they can experience “at-Onement,” Oneness with Gd. The donation in this parshah is a half-shekel and this is symbolic of our relation with Gd: we do our part and Gd does the rest. It is extremely kind of Gd to suggest to us that we are doing half and Gd is doing half. The reality, of course, is that we do our maximum and it is only a tiny drop of the Unbounded Doing that Gd does.
If impurities are not dissolved, then they will distort our perception of Gd’s Presence and the Eternal Blessing that is Gd will be experienced as a plague. This is a particularly apt concern in this time when Covid-19 has spread like a plague. Our donation at this time is to take very good care of our health: get good rest, good food, wash hands (see miu.edu/virus for guidelines and information), get vaccinated if we feel that is useful. As always donations to charity with an open heart help us to stay pure and get purer.
Fifth is that the half-shekel will go to provide oil.
In the previous parshah, we presented the view that the oil intended to provide fuel for the Eternal Flame is by our Sages considered symbolic of wisdom and that wisdom and eternity belong to Gd so the Eternal Flame is symbolic of Gd.
The oil people bring will be enhanced by the “art of the perfumer” with various spices and will be used in anointing the Tabernacle, the Ark, the priests and various parts of the Tabernacle. This anointing oil will be holy and everything anointed becomes holy as does everyone who touches the holy objects. “Holy” means “Whole,” Teshuvah, Full Restoration of the Awareness of One beyond the duality of Gd and individual.
One way to look at this is that the enhancing brings out qualities in the pure oil that were latent without the enhancement. This is like the census that revealed details within the community. My guess is that not only were these qualities perceivable in the anointing oil but they also began to be perceivable in the unenhanced oil used in the Eternal Flame and as Gd’s Presence in the Tabernacle and the Tent of Meeting. These qualities would be not only that of fragrance but of visibility, audibility, touch-ability. Gd would be Concrete and Detailed: The reality that Gd is All and Everyone, Everything, everywhere would be perceivable in the Eternal Flame and the Eternal Flame would be perceivable everywhere in everything. Our ancestors would be gaining Omniscience, they would be making significant progress to complete Teshuvah, complete restoration of the Awareness that all is One, beyond the duality of Gd and person. Gd and things.
The fact that enhancement of the oil and the enhancement of perception was needed is suggested by the fact that in this parshah we are also told that when Moses came down from listening to Gd at the top of Mt. Sinai, he found the people worshiping the Golden Calf, dancing around it. Despite hearing Gd’s voice, and seeing Gd in flame and smoke, our ancestors needed something concrete to trust in.
To make Gd Concrete in our lives, we need to offer not only abstract wisdom, symbolized by pure oil, but also something we ourselves create, not something to worship instead of Gd, like the Golden Calf created by Aaron from vessels brought by our ancestors but something to enhance our worship of Gd, to make it personal, like the enhancements of the pure oil with the spices and the art of the perfumer. Living our daily life with such creativity. Gd becomes more perceivable to us, and we do not need a Golden Calf or any material object to substitute for Gd: we perceive Gd by Direct Experience sufficiently to trust that Gd is Real, Almighty, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omni-Joyful. Omni-Compassionate, Omni-Loving and to realize that Gd disguises Gd as us, plays the important roles our individual lives have in the Divine Story.
The cheerful respect and competence that that our Congregation displays at each service suggests we are doing well in our lives to be pure, loving, generous, simple and making our relationship with Gd, concrete and personal. This makes me very happy.
Baruch HaShem