Parashat HaAzinu 5782 — 09/18/2021
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 32:1-52
This week I would like to look at one last influence on Rambam that Prof. Pines elucidates, namely the kalām. The kalām was an attempt to defend the tenets of Islam against arguments of the philosophers. In a way, this was Rambam’s program, although Rambam proceeded from the premise that truth is truth and therefore philosophical truth and revealed truth (Torah) could not conflict. His program, therefore, was to seek the unity of the reality behind the diversity of expressions. The kalām took a more polemical approach.
Prof. Pines writes:
For it may be held… that Maimonides, while refuting certain extreme teachings of the Mutakallimun [exponents of the kalām], saw eye to eye with them on the most decisive point of all, namely, the temporal creation of the world.
At all events he took pains to let his great powers of systematic exposition have full play in his summing-up of the main principles of the kalām.
We do not know what kalām treatises he used in his exposition of these “premises.” It is a pretty safe assumption that generally he drew upon the same sources as Averroes, who also attempted to formulate some of the first principles of the Mutakallimun, though his account of the doctrines is conceived on a much less ambitious scale than Maimonides’. The works utilized by the latter, or some of them, may not have been preserved. But even if they are, it might be a difficult task to prove that he had made use of them, as the composition and the style of the exposition concerning kalām bear the unmistakable stamp of his literary personality. This does not in any way mean that he falsifies his sources. His exposé of the “premises” of the Mutakallimun is verifiably accurate in its details as well as its main points. Nevertheless, the importance and the emphasis given in it to the various propositions may not have been quite the same as those accorded to them in the kalam treatises he knew.
It should also be noted that Maimonides’ “premises” of the Mutakallimun, as well as his “premises” of the philosophers, are mainly, or indeed exclusively, concerned with physical science, if, in accordance with the medieval classification, the concept of this science is extended so as to include the psychology of perception. But whereas the propositions of the philosophers expound and account for the order and the causality of the cosmos, the principles of the Mutakallimun, such as their atomism, the assumption that everything that can be imagined can happen, and so on, are meant to prove that no causality and no permanent order exist in the world, all events are determined directly, without the intervention of intermediate causes, by the will of Gd, which is not bound by any law. In other words, there is no cosmos and there is no nature, these two Greek notions being replaced by the concept of congeries of atoms, with atomic accidents inherent in them being created in every instant by arbitrary acts of divine volition.
We talk a lot nowadays about “science denial” among certain members of our society, and, speaking as a scientist who is watching people die unnecessarily and seeing the severe weather all over, it is in fact a real problem. Yet what we call science denial is the refusal to accept facts that oppose the denier’s world-view, despite their solid scientific verification. Often, this denial is substantiated by asserting other “scientific” facts despite the lack of evidence for them, and often explaining away the contrary evidence as “fake” and the lack of supporting evidence as “suppression” by the powers-that-be. However, all this argumentation generally falls within the scientific paradigm. It assumes that the universe is regular and this regularity is governed by laws of nature which can be discovered by observation of cause and effect.
If you want real science denial, you need to turn to the kalām. Rather than an objective reality subject to natural law, “all events are determined directly, without the intervention of intermediate causes, by the will of Gd, which is not bound by any law.” Lest you think that this idea is unique to medieval Islam, Ramban (R. Moshe ben Nachman / Nachmanides) held very similar views, despite living a century after the Rambam, and even the formidable philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) said that one cannot prove that the universe was not created 5 minutes ago. We could have been created in the very bodies we think we have been in from birth, with all our “memories” and our family photos and the graves of our forefathers, and it would look exactly the same to us as if all the processes that we assume took place to get to this point, actually took place. Why not? We’re talking about Gd’s creativity here!
Our liturgy gives expression to this idea, when it states in the blessings before the morning Sh’ma: um’chadesh b’chol yom tamid ma’aseh bereishit / “Who recreates every day the work of creation.” This means that Gd is not a clockmaker who set up the world and then sat back to watch it work itself out. Without Gd’s sustaining energy the entire edifice of creation would collapse, according to the kalām and Ramban. I think Russell would probably be agnostic on this issue, since it is not open to scientific proof or falsification.
What problem was the kalām trying to solve with this theory of continuous creation? I believe it is the apparent contradiction between Gd’s freedom of action and the observed regularity of nature. If we posit that there are laws of nature that govern the regularity of phenomena, then it would appear that Gd is bound by those laws, negating His freedom of action. An alternative response to this question is that given by many other Jewish scholars, that Gd created the laws of nature and Gd can abrogate them as He wishes when there is a special need (like the Jewish people’s being trapped between the Egyptian army and the Sea). In fact, the two explanations are essentially the same, at least for practical purposes – whether the regularities we perceive are real or imaginary, we can treat them as real and get the correct predictions out of our “laws,” unless Gd creates a miracle (i.e. decides to deviate from those laws, be they real or apparent).
From the point of view of Vedic Science, the ultimate ground and constituent of the entire creation is Pure Consciousness, which, as we have seen, is transcendental to time and space. Because of its self-referential nature, Pure Consciousness vibrates virtually within itself; all of creation is this vibration, and is perceived as finite, time-bound and separate from Pure Consciousness only because of imperfections in our apparatus of perception (“sin” in Jewish terms). Therefore, from this perspective, it is certainly true that creation is an on-going, never-ending process. The question of whether the universe is created anew each moment or not does not arise on the level of Pure Consciousness, and we see it to be merely a question of how we describe a process which is virtual and eternal in a temporal language. The virtual activity within Pure Consciousness is certainly regular and law-governed – those laws of nature constitute the Veda. Yet those laws are also flexible enough to permit virtually any phenomenon to exist on the surface value of creation. In fact, even refined human consciousness is able to manipulate at the level of Pure Consciousness to produce any kind of manifest reality – how much more so then can Gd. If we recognize that all creation is the miraculous emergence of multiplicity from Unity, then we too can work miracles on the surface of existence.
******************************
Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat HaAzinu
“Ha’azinu” means “Listen”: not just “hear” but “listen, listen with full attention.”
As he speaks to our ancestors (and to us), Moses calls upon Heaven and Earth to listen. Not only Heaven and Earth outside us, but within us.
He praises Gd and rebukes Israel from turning away from Gd. Moses concludes by telling our ancestors (and all generations) to set our heart to his words so that we may command our children to obey Torah: Torah will be alive in us and so our words will be alive and we may command, not just tell.
The central message in Moses’s song is that there is no god besides Gd.
Gd Says, “See now that it is I! (who Am your Rock and Your Shelter). I Am the One and there is no god like Me”. Deuteronomy 32:39, chabad.org translation.
As we realize this, we realize the implications of Gd Being One: not only is there no god besides Gd, there is nothing but Gd and all that exists is an expression of Gd, within Gd. Everything is Gd from the Universe, to galaxies, stars, planets, mountains, trees, people, our actions, our thoughts, our feelings, our decisions, our memory.
And so, when Gd praises or rebukes, He, Gd is simply playing a game in which He is the Director, Screenwriter, Actors, Camera Crew, Audience and Reviewers. He is the good ones and the villains. Amazing!
Gd is the Source of our thought and of our decisions, our actions.
When we read in Torah that our ancestors turned away from Gd, it is clear that Gd was the One who Is the Thought that made them turn.
It is good to remember this so that we are not hard on those who stray, whether it was our ancestors or our neighbors or ourselves. When we make a decision to turn toward or away from Wholeness, it is Gd who is making the decision, even though it seems as if we are.
But, that said, we can’t spend our lives constantly thinking “Gd is All, Gd is my thought, I have nothing to do with anything…” and so on.
We have to act naturally, spontaneously, just being the people we are, with the personalities and skills we have, yet always favoring what we know to be right, letting our heart always fill with love for Gd and our neighbor.
Torah and the vast range of commentary on it, as well as our own feelings and thoughts about it, help us to develop a firm sense of right and wrong, help us to act from this wisdom, and to better and better return to our Source — Gd.
So between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, and every moment always, let us do the greatest kindness, the greatest love, to ourself and our neighbors and attune ourselves to Torah, to Gd, naturally, comfortably, easily, but steadily, consistently, routinely, naturally, spontaneously, uniting more and more with Universal Love and Joy, the One and Only Self (aka “Gd”)
Baruch HaShem