Parashat Vayechi 5786 – 01/03/2026
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.
Bereishit 47:28-50:26
Dear friends – A Happy New Year to all! I am participating, albeit at a distance, in the Winter WPA from December 30 – January 13, 2026. This, of course, will severely limit the time I have to study and write, while of course helping to create coherence for the world and give me some much-needed rest and transcendence. So, the next two entries may be briefer than usual, but I hope they will give some insight anyway.
Having established the basic building blocks of his argument, Rambam begins the second part of his treatise with a demonstration that Gd is the Prime Mover – that is, the basis of all the dynamism of creation.
It follows necessarily from the twenty-fifth premise that there is a mover, which has moved the matter of that which is subject to generation and corruption so that it received form. If now it is asked: what moved this proximate mover? – it follows of necessity that there exists for it another mover either of its own species or of a different species; for motion exists in four categories, and sometimes these different kinds of change are called motion in a general way, as we have mentioned in the fourth premise. Now this does not go to infinity, as we have mentioned in the third premise. For we have found that every movement goes back, in the last resort, to the movement of the fifth body, and no further. It is from this movement that every mover and predisposer in the whole lower world proceeds and derives. Now the sphere moves with a movement of translation, and this is prior to all other movements, as has been mentioned in the fourteenth premise. Similarly every movement of translation goes back, in the last resort, to the movement of the sphere. It is as if you say: this stone, which was in motion, was moved by a staff ; the staff was moved by a hand, the hand by tendons; the tendons by muscles; the muscles by nerves; the nerves by natural heat; and the natural heat by the form that subsists therein, this form being undoubtedly the first mover. What obliges this mover to move could be an opinion, for instance an opinion that the stone should be brought by the blow of the staff to a hole in order to stop it, so that blowing wind should not enter thereby toward the man who had this opinion? Now the mover of this wind and the factor causing it to blow is the movement of the sphere. In a similar way you will find that every cause of generation and corruption goes back, in the last resort, to the movement of the sphere.
It appears that what Rambam wants to do is systematically to transcend the levels of manifest creation and get to its source, which he will identify with Gd. He begins with the observation that everything in the universe is always changing – motion is just one form of change. But, according to our premises, change always requires something that causes the change – a mover in Rambam’s language. This progression continues back in the chain of causation, but, as per our third premise, there must be an end to this chain of causation, and Rambam identifies this with the “fifth body,” or ether.
The “sphere” is apparently in constant motion. Although Rambam states that this motion is motion of “translation,” I think he means that it is movement through space, but not necessarily straight line movement as modern physics understands it. In fact, according to the Aristotelian / Ptolemaic understanding of the universe, the “sphere” is in continual circular motion. But in any event, it is the motion of the sphere that generates all motion in the universe.
What we have done is moved from the surface level of change, to subtler and subtler levels of change (which cause the grosser levels of change), until we come almost to the basis of all change. I say “almost” because we haven’t established what causes the motion of the sphere. We will get to that next week.
I would like to make one point relating this argument to Vedic Science. Vedic Science asserts that beneath all change is the unchanging field of Pure Consciousness, and that it is the internal, virtual dynamics of Pure Consciousness that appears, to one with a limited perspective, as actual change in the “real” world. What, however, is the source of this virtual dynamism? According to Vedic Science it is the nature of Pure Consciousness as consciousness , which is able to be aware of objects. However, since Pure Consciousness is all that there is – certainly on its own level – the only thing Pure Consciousness has to be aware of is itself. Pure Consciousness takes on the roles of both Observer and Observed. It is this inherent, virtual duality that gives rise to an “infinite frequency vibration” between the two poles. This vibration then breaks down into lower frequency patterns, which appear as the forms and phenomena of creation.
As we have seen, Pure Consciousness is transcendental to time, and this whole description of the range of levels of excitation and causation is also beyond time. In other words, it is eternal. The whole chain of causation is not something that takes place in time, but perhaps more on the level of logic. How one can reconcile our observation that things move and change, with the eternal, unchanging nature of the basis of the universe, is something beyond me. I think that in Unity Consciousness the question doesn’t even arise – our experience is that the universe is nothing other than Pure Consciousness and we understand the connection from within ourselves. Before that, we seem to be left with a logical contradiction.
Gd willing we will return to these issues next week.
Chazak, Chazak v’Nitchazeik
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Vayechi (“and he lived”)
Jacob lives in Egypt for 17 years, his end draws near, Israel asks Joseph to promise he will be buried in the Holy Land, with his fathers. Joseph swears.
From the chabad.org point of view, Jacob is called “Jacob” when he toils, “Israel” when he is free from toil. When Jacob was wrestling with a man, then an angel, then Gd, he was toiling; when he prevailed, he was free from toil, and so called “Israel.”
Living in Egypt, Mitzraim, Restrictions, is living with toiling; returning to Canaan, Synchronicity, Wholeness, he will be free from restrictions, from toil, he will be “Israel.” So as his end draws near, he is blessed with a taste of his status as Israel and it is from this level of freedom, of Joy, that he asks Joseph to swear to bury his body in Canaan, the Holy Land, the Land of Wholeness.
We do not need to die in order to be free from toil. We can simply open ourselves to the deeper and deeper levels of Torah, the levels which are deeper than the level of meaning, which is a level of restrictions. We can open ourselves to Torah, within which all levels exist, Torah which is One with Gd, Totality. This is the real Holy Land, the real Land of Wholeness.
As Jacob, he becomes ill, toiling to rise from his bed when Joseph brings Joseph’s sons to him. When he sees Joseph’s sons, he is raised in spirit and is Israel.
As Israel, he blesses Joseph’s sons, and adopts them and as Israel he blesses Joseph, too, giving one portion more than he gives to his other sons.
It is as Jacob, though that he assembles his other sons and blesses each of them, so this level of blessing involves toil, much harmony but to some degree out-of-tune with the Harmony of Gd.
But still! there is great harmony: When Jacob blesses his sons, he asks them to assemble and then he blesses them individually. This can be taken, and Rabbi Yehuda Berg of the Kabbalah Center takes it that way, to indicate that Jacob is emphasizing that the individual blessings will be fruitful when the sons act as an assembly, a unity, a family. And, when the tribes of Jacob’s sons are considered together, they are considered the Children of Israel, a unity, in Harmony, free from toil.
From this we can see an affirmation of what many of us already feel and act on: we are able to fulfill ourselves as individuals when we act together as a community, a family. It is through Love, through inclusion, gathering together, excluding no one, that we rise to the level of Israel, free from toil, completely in Harmony with Gd, with Oneness.
As the father of the Children of Israel, Israel dies and Joseph, Israel’s family and entourage (except for the youngest children who remain in Egypt tending the flocks), accompanied by Pharaoh’s ministers, and many leaders of Mitzraim, bring him and bury him in the cave of Machpelah, (“Cave of the Double Caves,” integration of restrictions and unboundedness) where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca were buried.
This gathering of the leaders of Mitzraim – Restrictions, toil – with Israel’s family, taking Israel’s body to Canaan, Wholeness, is another example of how appreciation, love, can raise us to gathering and thus to Wholeness.
Also, we can think of the “burying of the body” as “transcendence of the body, of individuality” and this takes place through Appreciation, Love, letting go the limited sense of self and rising to the Unlimited Experience of Self, the Common Self, All-in-All, One.
Physical death is not necessary to experience this transcendence: many in our congregation and many around the world experience this Unlimited Experience and, at least a few, are experiencing permanently.
May all souls experience this Teshuvah, this return to Full Awareness, so that all of Life lives in Fulfillment, in Harmony.
Baruch HaShem