Parashat Tazria 5784 — 04/13/2024
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 12:1-13:59
Tazria and Metzora are often read together. Since this year is a leap year, they are read separately, Tazria this week and Metzora next week.
Rambam continues with his examination of “negative attributes” in regard to our gaining or having knowledge of Gd.
Someone may ask and say: If there is no device leading to the apprehension of the true reality of His essence and if demonstration proves that it can only be apprehended that He exists and that it is impossible, as has been demonstrated, to ascribe to Him affirmative attributes, in what respect can there be superiority or inferiority between those who apprehend Him? If, however, there is none, Moses our Master and Solomon did not apprehend anything different from what a single individual among the pupils apprehends, and there can be no increase in this knowledge.
I’m not sure what Rambam means by “device.” It must be a technique or a line of inquiry, or a philosophical paradigm that takes the mind from one level of understanding to another. Perhaps it’s best left at “technique,” with the understanding that it doesn’t necessarily mean a meditative technique like TM. For example, proof by mathematical induction is a technique/device for proving assertions about the natural numbers. If this reading is correct, Rambam is saying that there is no procedure to get to apprehension of Gd’s essence, which is so totally beyond human comprehension that we can only approach it asymptotically. He further goes on to assert that ascribing positive attributes to Gd is going in the opposite direction to where we want to be.
It occurs to me that this is something like the mechanics of the TM Technique. If we want the mind to settle down, the last thing we want to do is to put effort into forcing the mind to settle down. That will take us in the direction of more activity, not less. It would be like trying to suppress the waves on the ocean by pushing them down – if it were even possible to do so, the wave would just pop up somewhere else. If we want to transcend thought, we must allow the mind to settle down naturally by experiencing thought at progressively subtler, more abstract levels. The transcendent is purely abstract, and putting anything specific on it – be it a thought in our individual process of transcending or a positive attribute in our investigation of the reality of Gd, takes us out to the more concrete and specific. Instead, we must turn to the negative attributes that Rambam has been describing.
Continuing with Rambam’s discussion, if all that we can know about Gd is that He exists, then virtually everyone can come to this level of apprehension. We see, however, that there are different levels of human beings’ understanding of Gd, from the sublime to the ridiculous. How is this possible? Rambam does not seem to consider the possibility that there might be innate differences in apprehension among human beings, just like each of us has different skills and talents and different proclivities. Rather, he appears to be focused on the development of an individual’s apprehension of Gd, as we are all commanded by Scripture to “know Gd.”
Now it is generally accepted by the men of the Law, nay even by the philosophers, that there exist numerous differences of degree in this respect. Know, therefore, that this is indeed so and that the differences of degree between those who apprehend are very great indeed. For the thing of which attributes are predicated becomes more particularized with every increase in attributes that are predicated of it, and he who predicates these attributes accordingly comes nearer to the apprehension of the true reality of the thing in question.
Positive attributes bring us closer to an understanding of individual objects, which can be specified (“particularized”) by positive attributes.
In a similar way, you come nearer to the apprehension of Him, may He be exalted, with every increase in the negations regarding Him; and you come nearer to that apprehension than he who does not negate with regard to Him that which, according to what has been demonstrated to you, must be negated. For this reason a man sometimes labors for many years in order to understand some science and to gain true knowledge of its premises so that he should have certainty with regard to this science, whereas the only conclusion from this science in its entirety consists in our negating with reference to Gd some notion of which it has been learnt by means of a demonstration that it cannot possibly be ascribed to Gd.
It appears that Rambam is here contrasting ordinary science (“science” in Rambam’s time included philosophy; what we call “science” is called “natural science” by the philosophers – remember, the word “science” has at its root the meaning “knowledge”) with “Divine science.” While ordinary science, which deals with the manifest, created world, can use positive attributes to get us closer to the essence of the objects of its study, Divine science must use negative attributes. Rambam goes on to give examples of people who have different levels of understanding of the way negative attributes apply will have different levels of closeness to Gd and apprehension of Gd’s essence. These different levels of understanding can arise from a proficiency or deficiency in reasoning ability, or by the quality of the person’s education, or from different levels of perception.
I would add one more dimension to Rambam’s discussion. This is the dimension of direct experience. When we settle down during TM the mind gets subtler and more abstract, and eventually merges with the transcendent. In this process, we gradually lose all particularizing attributes until we transcend attributes altogether and experience our own essence. As we continue to practice, this transcendent reality becomes infused first into the mind, then the perceptions, until this abstract Unity is our all-pervasive reality. This is as close to an apprehension of Gd that we can get – the fact that we still have a body maintains the separation between the individual in Unity Consciousness and Gd. I have no reason to believe that Rambam meant to point to this experience. Perhaps as we continue in Moreh Nevukhim we will be pleasantly surprised!
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Tazria
“Tazria” means” childbirth: to cast seed, to get pregnant.” That’s why it say tazri’a v’yaldah = “gets pregnant and gives birth.” The yaldah part is childbirth. symbolically, the successful completion of any project. This parshah presents Gd’s commands about the states of being unclean and clean and also about the date for celebrating the beginning of a new year. When we are clean we can enter the Sanctuary and get the added ability to enjoy Gd’s Presence that the Harmonious Nature of the Sanctuary provides. Similarly, a new year provides such an opportunity since it is an opportunity to let go any troubles that might have been veiling our experience of Gd’s Presence.
Oddly, a woman is considered unclean for some time after she gives birth: I say, “oddly,” because considering the Holiness of giving birth, we might expect that a new mother would be particularly clean and therefore most able to perceive Gd’s Presence and most welcome to enter the Sanctuary.
Nechoma Greisman on chabad.org suggests an explanation that makes sense: Gd has commanded that a person who touches a dead body is ritually impure; when a woman is carrying her fetus in the womb, she is extra pure—she has two lives. When the child is born, she has only one inside herself, and so there is, in a sense, a loss of life. So, she needs a bit of time and some ritual to feel fully alive again inside herself and not dependent upon her child outside herself to feel fully alive.
In other areas of our lives – for example, working on some extended project for work, home, service to community – there would certainly be the desire to celebrate when the project is complete but there might also be a feeling of loss, a feeling of emptiness because we no longer have the joy of the activity we were doing. We have, instead, the joy of fulfillment, but perhaps some sense of emptiness until we begin a new project.
Hopefully, we don’t have much of a loss, and we also have many other projects we were working on so we are keeping busy, living in the present and keep moving on so we just enjoy the completion of our project and the way it serves as a foundation for new projects and the skills gained through it help us with the projects we continue working on and new projects that the completed project suggests to us. Also, hopefully, the activity of the project helped us to grow as humans revering Gd the All-in-All so what dominates our awareness is our spiritual growth not any particular project we’re working on. even giving birth. Hopefully, the project helped us deepen our connection with Gd, The Fullness, Oneness, Wholeness.
Baruch HaShem