Parashat Bo 5786 – 01/24/2026
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 10:1-13:16
Rambam continues his exposition on the qualities of Gd:
It is well known that we constantly see things that are in potentia and pass into actuality. Now everything that passes from potentiality into actuality has something outside itself that causes it to pass, as has been mentioned in the eighteenth premise. It is also clear that this something, which in one particular case causes to pass from potentiality to actuality, had been a cause of this passage in potentia and then only became such a cause in actu….
The demonstration now goes similarly to the previous demonstrations. Whatever is causing the move from potentiality to actuality also must be changeable from potentiality to actuality, and since the argument cannot go back infinitely, we eventually get to a first cause, something “that is perpetually existent in one and the same state, and in which there is no potentiality at all.” Potentiality, as opposed to actual existence, implies that there is a time when it is not, and that is impossible, as the Gita puts it: There never was a time when I was not, nor you, nor these leaders of men (2:12). So, this is a proof of the eternal, and therefore necessary, existence of Gd.
Rambam concludes:
All these are demonstrative methods of proving the existence of one deity, who is neither a body nor a force in a body, while believing at the same time in the eternity of the world.
He will now continue with the flip side of the argument:
There is also a demonstrative method of refuting the belief in the corporeality of [Gd] and of establishing [Gd’s] unity. For if there were two deities it would follow necessarily that they must have on separately conceivable thing in which they participate, this being the thing in virtue of which each one of them merits being called a deity. They also must necessarily have another separately conceivable thing in virtue of which their separation came about and they became two. Now in virtue of the fact that in each of them there must be a separately conceivable thing other than the one subsisting in the other deity, each one of them must be composed of two separately conceivable things. Accordingly, as has been explained in the nineteenth premise, none of them can be a first cause or necessary of existence in respect to its own essence, but each of them must have several causes. If, however, the separately conceivable thing causing the separation between them exists in only one of them, the one in which the two separately conceivable things exist, is not according to his essence, existent of necessity.
The thrust of this argument is similar to the one we made a week or two ago, based on the experience of the transcendent in the TM program. Recall that our experience of Pure Consciousness is consciousness without any object, simply consciousness aware within itself, unbounded and eternal. Since there is no distinguishing object within Pure Consciousness, we argued that it must be unified, for if there were two, how would we tell them apart – what would separate them one from the other? In what conceptual space could they be separated? Distinction, diversity, does not exist within Pure Consciousness. This means that it can only be one. Rambam makes essentially the same argument, only more precisely.
Rambam offers another proof of the unity of the deity. He notes that the whole of creation is a web of interconnected pieces, with forces throughout holding everything together. Now if there were two deities, one concerned with one part of creation and the other concerned with the rest, then either they act one at a time, with one being idle while the other is acting, or they act in tandem, like the two officers in a Minuteman silo, who must both press the firing switch at the same time. Having the two “taking turns” like obedient children on a playground is absurd, for what would there be that makes the active one stop and the inactive one start being active again. It would have to be something that is outside the two deities, and one might say is superior to them, as it controls their activity.
If, on the other hand, they must act together to maintain creation, then the two of them together form a system in which the parts must act in concert, and that, again, would require some other existent to coordinate the activity of the two deities. But this contradicts the nature of a deity. The upshot is that we must reject the idea of two deities, and proclaim Hashem echad / Gd is One.
A corollary of this is the Gd cannot be corporeal, for every body is a compound (22 nd premise), and we then make the same argument as we made in dismissing the two deities acting in concert with one another. So Gd is One, unified, not compound and not a body. Gd is the one transcendent reality underlying all time, space and activity. Rambam concludes his first chapter here, with a series of logical arguments. He will go on to adduce arguments from Scripture as well in the subsequent chapters, which we will begin considering, Gd willing, next week.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Bo
Bo” means “come” or “go.” After seven plagues, the Lrd tells Moses, “Come to Pharaoh, tell him to let my people go but I have hardened his heart so he will not and I will visit three more plagues upon him and his people so they will know that I am the Lrd.” (paraphrasing).
We see Gd, Who is Totality, playing the roles of Moses and Aaron but also of Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s people. As Moses and Aaron, He worships Wholeness; as Pharaoh, he worships partial values and refuses to open Himself to Wholeness. This is a reminder to us, that Gd is All: Gd is our friend, Gd is our opponent, Gd is the neutrals, Gd is All.
It is a reminder to place Wholeness first in our lives and to draw upon Universal Love so we ARE this Love and it flows freely through us to transform restrictions, opponents, troubles into Wholeness, friends and Blessings.
Pharaoh refuses to let Israelites go and three more plagues are visited upon him and all Egypt.
With the plague of the death of the first born and the death of his first-born son Pharaoh finally drives the Children of Israel out of Egypt to worship the Lrd. They take with them their children, flocks and wealth the Egyptians gave them, wealth they infuse with Wholeness.
Literally, “first born” refers to the first-born child; symbolically, it is whatever is our most precious desire, our link between our present status and the future status we hope to achieve.
Our religion guides us to cherish most a first-born that can never die, making our most precious desire the desire to be restored to full awareness of Oneness, One with the One, One with Gd Who Is All There Is, Unborn and Undying.
And our religion guides us to “worship Gd with all our heart and all our soul” and “love our neighbor as our Self,” and thus to free ourselves from enslavement to limited values of life, which were the values of Pharaoh’s Egypt/Mitzraim/ Restrictions, and to gently become fully aware of the Wholeness within which all limits are no longer experienced as limits but are experienced as expressions of the Wholeness within which they exist, flow, flourish.
This parshah reminds us to keep our priorities in order and to free ourselves from restrictions so we have time to worship the Lrd, and thus to transform restrictions into Expressions of the Lrd, of Wholeness, and that includes restoring our experience of our restricted self to Full Awareness, One with the One.
Baruch HaShem