Sukkot 5784 — 09/30/2023
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.
Rambam now delves into the nature of angels.
The angels too are not endowed with bodies, but are intellects separate from matter. However, they are the objects of an act, and Gd has created them, as will be explained. The Sages say in Bereshit Rabbah [XXI]: “The flaming sword which turns every way [Gen 3:24 – this is the angel stationed at the gate of the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were expelled], is called thus with reference to the verse: His ministers a flaming fire [Ps 104:4]. [The expression], which turns every way, alludes to the fact that sometimes they turn into men, sometimes into women, sometimes into spirits, and sometimes into angels.” Through this dictum they have made it clear that the angels are not endowed with matter and that outside the mind they have no fixed corporeal shape, but that all such shapes are only to be perceived in the vision of prophecy in consequence of the action of the imaginative capacity, as will be mentioned in connection with the notion of the true reality of prophecy.
Gd is apparently not the only non-corporeal being in the universe, according to Rambam. Angels, being beyond matter (or at least gross matter), are also non-corporeal, and therefore can appear in different forms to different people (prophets) depending on their imaginative faculty. Rambam will talk about prophecy later in his work, but for the moment it is enough to know that he takes prophecy to be (a) perception of some spiritual reality by the pure consciousness of the prophet, and then (b) that cognition is formed into images and / or words by the prophet’s imaginative faculty (i.e. the faculty that makes images). The prophet can then convey these images to others for whom the spiritual reality might not be apparent.
This actually sounds very quantum mechanical. Prior to the 20th century, the basic world-view of physics (and objective science in general) was that there was an objective reality that was fixed, and many people could perceive and measure it. Since it was objective, only connected with each person’s subjective world through the passive means of the senses. In other words, the process of observation that connects the observer with the object of observation, has no effect on either other than to transfer information about the object to the observer (the subject). The subjective and objective worlds are two separate domains that interact with one another through the process of observation (and through action, by which the subject manipulates objects).
This paradigm works well when we are talking about macroscopic (human-sized) objects. If we are looking at an object, photons of light are bouncing off the object and into our eyes. Our brain then interprets the resulting pattern of electrical impulses and creates an image in our consciousness of the object. The reason objective science works at all is that for macroscopic objects, everyone agrees about the characteristics of the object. We can compare the properties of the object to a standard (this is what measurement is) and everyone will come up with the same numbers (to within the limits of our measuring instruments). This is how we operationalize the idea that there is an objective world “out there” and that it is the primary reality.
This whole picture breaks down when we go to the microscopic world. Once we began to understand the structure of matter as being made up of molecules and atoms, and the structure of atoms as being made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. These particles are very small, and the paradigm of photons bouncing off them so that we can “see” them no longer holds water. When the energy of the photon is roughly the same as the energy of the object, the photon makes the object recoil significantly when it interacts with the object and gets redirected into our eyes. Therefore, the actual means of observation affect the state of the observed, and the information that comes in to our senses is out of date. This is the first level of understanding of the problem of measuring on a very small scale. (I might mention that if one is using a means of observation that is energetic enough – think X-rays – then it may actually destroy the system under observation rather than just push it one way or another, and what we see, or measure actually doesn’t even exist any more.)
As our understanding of the nature of matter grew, we began to understand that the elementary “particles” were actually not little points of mass, but rather were waves that exist in regions of space and time. These waves don’t have one specific position, because they are spread out in space and move through space as time goes by. When we try to measure the position or the momentum of the “particle,” we only get probabilistic answers – where the wave is large it is more likely to find the particle, and where the wave is smaller it is less likely. We cannot measure the position of a particle with infinite accuracy in principle, because the particle is not a particle to begin with. We are asking the wrong question of nature, and nature gives us the best answer it can.
Now as long as we allow our particle wave to just be a wave, it propagates through space and time with no problem at all. It has its own deterministic law – the Schrödinger Equation – and everything is just hunky-dory. It is only when we go to measure the position of the particle that we find sometimes it’s here, sometimes it’s somewhere else. It is only when our consciousness impinges on the “object” that we get uncertainty. As long as our consciousness tries to connect with the object purely on a physical level it is as if we are violating the essence of the object, and nature strikes back by not giving us the results we want. The takeaway here is that we cannot divorce perception from the quality of the observer, as if the object were something immutable outside the observer, and the process of observation were a connector between the observer and the object that disturbs neither one of them.
Now let’s return to the angels. The angels are not “objects” in the usual sense, in that they are not composed of gross matter, and are generally not perceptible with the senses. The way angels are perceived is directly by our consciousness – they are cognized rather than perceived. But since angels are “separate” – that is, created by Gd, we can’t say that the cognition of angels is completely different than perception of more material objects. Instead, the process of observation must take place on a very quiet, subtle level, one which the usual noise in our minds drowns out. That is why only a few become prophets and most of us are caught up in the material, sensory world.
Whatever the specific mechanism, it is clear that the subtle levels of our mind, perceiving the subtle levels of reality (angels), using subtler means of perception, are not going to be as rigid or bounded as ordinary surface-level perception. Indeed, it is more likely to be like quantum measurement than surface value, classical measurement. And that quantum perception is flexible and can produce different results, depending on the consciousness of the observer. Thus, Rambam says, “…sometimes they turn into men, sometimes into women, sometimes into spirits, and sometimes into angels.” And that sometimes depends on the imaginative faculty of the prophet – that is, the consciousness of the observer. And of course, the deeper reality, whether it be angels or quantum particles, is closer to the truth of life.