Parashat Bereshit 5787 – 10/10/2026
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. The text we are working from is the two-volume translation by Prof. Shlomo Pines, University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Bereshit 1:1 – 6:8
Rambam continues his discussion of the arguments of the Aristotelians regarding the eternity of the universe:
The second method is the one in which eternity is shown to be necessary because there do not subsist for Him, may He be exalted, any incentives, supervening accidents, and impediments. It is difficult to resolve this doubt, and the solution is subtle. Hear it.
Know that every agent endowed with will, who performs his acts for the sake of something, must of necessity act at a certain time and not act at another time because of impediments or supervening accidents. To take as an example: a man, for instance, may wish to have a house but does not build it because of impediments – if the building materials are not at hand or if they, though being at hand, have not been prepared for receiving the form because of the absence of tools. Sometimes, too, both the materials and the tools are at hand, but the man does not build because he does not wish to build since he can dispense with a shelter. If, however, accidents like heat or cold supervene, he is compelled to seek a shelter, whereupon he will wish to build. It has thus become clear that supervening accidents may change the will and that impediments may oppose the will in such a way that it is not executed.
I think we can all see where Rambam is taking this. The arguments that are being made against creation in time all use human experience as their basis. But human experience is based on limited perception, limited time and bounded space, and all the objects in our small, human world, are composites of smaller objects. Each layer of reality is composed of objects from a deeper layer, until you get to the transcendent Unified Field of all the laws of nature. The perspective from this layer is naturally very different from a limited human perspective. It is beyond time, space and change, but creation occurs within it.
Part of the argument here has to do with the will of the actor. Now in the case of a human actor, the will is separate from our essence. It is a part of our personality, like the mind or the intellect, and it can therefore be affected by internal forces or by external forces, as Rambam describes in the quoted passage. Thus, argue those who espouse the idea that creation is eternal, if Gd had willed to create at a certain time, there must have been some forces (presumably internal, since there is nothing that is external to Gd) that actuated His Will at that particular time and not at any other time.
Rambam argues that to the contrary, Gd’s Will is inseparable from Gd’s essence, as is Gd’s knowledge, and, since time is subsumed within Gd (it is part of creation), we can’t really picture Gd sitting around until something outside comes along and nudges him and says, “Don’t You think it’s about time you created something?” In fact, I find it hard to relate to the idea of Gd’s having a Will in the sense that we do. Our will is constrained – if we put it in tune with Gd’s Will then life is lived without strain or struggle, and vice versa. In a sense, we have been given free will only to be charged with constraining that will in accordance with Gd’s Will. As Rabban Gamliel says in Pirke Avot [2:4]: Make His [Gd’s] will like your will, so that He will make your will like His will. Nullify your will to His will, so that He will nullify the will of others to your will.
Gd’s Will, on the other hand, is completely unconstrained. Since nothing exists outside of Gd, Gd has complete control over everything – Gd is just controlling Himself, as it were. Obviously, this has no relation at all to our capabilities. It is as if the word “will” is used to mean one thing as applied to creatures, and something quite different as applied to the Creator. Getting the two confused leads to confused conclusions about the nature of Gd and the nature of reality.
Rambam concludes this chapter with the third method used to support the notion that the universe is eternal:
The third method: It is the one in which they argue the eternity of the world to be necessary because everything, with regard to which Wisdom decides that it should come forth, comes forth at the very moment of the decision. For His wisdom is eternal as is His essence, and in consequence that which necessarily proceeds from it is likewise eternal. This is a very feeble way of going on to an obligatory conclusion. For in the same way as we do not know what was His wisdom in making it necessary that the spheres should be nine – neither more nor less – and the number of the stars equal to what it is – neither more nor less – and that they should be neither bigger nor smaller than they are, we do not know what was His wisdom to bringing into existence the universe at a recent period after its not having existed. The universe is consequent upon His perpetual and immutable wisdom.
Isaiah (55:8-9) makes the same point:
For My plans are not your plans, nor are My ways your ways, declares Gd.
But as the heavens are high above the earth, So are My ways high above your ways and My plans above your plans.
In other words, Gd’s Essence and His Wisdom are one, transcendental, and in Jewish thought, unknowable. Even if we allow for humans in higher states of consciousness, any kind of knowing we might have of Gd will only be on the level of our unbounded consciousness, and will be beyond the realm of logic and reasoning – beyond the intellect altogether. Trying to apply our categories to Gd’s Wisdom and Gd’s activity is making a jump from earth to heaven, and it just doesn’t work. I think this is why Rambam is so dismissive of this third approach, but in fact, we run into the same problem with virtually any approach that tries to apply human categories to Divine activities.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Bereshit
Torah is beyond language, beyond verbal definitions and grammar – it is the fundamental liveliness of Gd. On our level of life, of awareness, the sound value of Torah comes closer to the transcendental and all-pervading quality of Torah than does the meaning value.
From this standpoint, here are two sources to listen to the beginning of Bereshit: the first is traditional; the second is creative.
1. Bereshit 1-8 with cantillation: Very sweet, easy to listen to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa_g1QOt9y0
2. Very lively. Award-winning singer Noa sings Bereshit with Philarmonic Rishon Le Tzion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYKMWtOlHVE
Consider Bereshit the seed of Teshuvah / return to Oneness – -and V’zot HaBeracha, the last parshah of the Chumash, the fruit: Do we see that the seed has borne fruit?
If we take it on the plain level of meaning, no: the children of Israel (that’s not only a long time ago but today and in all times) have not yet entered the Promised Land, and Moses, the great leader, never will.
But perhaps we can say that Moses, one of the guests that visits the sukkah during Succoth, has entered Gan Eden, as tradition has it, and so the human race has returned at least a few people to the Gan Eden from which Adam and Eve were evicted: not quite Teshuvah but definitely a return to a higher status.
And later in Bereshit, we see Enoch mentioned as walking with Gd – definitely teshuvah – and Noah as being a righteous person, one who Gd trusts to maintain life on our planet when the rest of humanity, due its wickedness, is destroyed in the flood.
So even early in Torah, taken on the level of meaning, we see examples of the fruit of the seed appearing: people who walk with Gd, who are righteous.
And perhaps dying by Gd’s mouth, as Parshah V’Zot HaBrachah tells us Moses did, is connecting with Gd, The One, and so is teshuvah.
Perhaps also we can say that in Parshah V’Zot HaBrachah, we learn that through Gd’s blessings, given by Moses to each of the 12 tribes, the tribes were united, and became One, symbolic of Teshuvah, return to Unity, to Oneness.
Having considered the fruit in Parshah V’Zot HaBrachah, let us consider the seed:
Bereshit begins in Hebrew:
“Bereshit bara Elohim et HaShamayim v’et Ha’aretz…”
The way this is commonly translated to English, Bereshit reads: “In the beginning, Gd created heaven and earth…”.
The way the ArtScroll Chumash and chabad.org translate it, it reads, “In the beginning of Gd’s creating the heavens and the earth…”
This is not only according to scholars more grammatically correct but makes more sense because Gd is without beginning or end, so beginning can only refer to some relative beginning, not to an absolute one.
In addition, Wikipedia notes that not only is “bara” a verb that is only used in reference to Gd but it doesn’t mean “create,” it means “differentiate/separate, assign roles to.” From this standpoint, the heavens and the earth already existed but they were not separated/distinguished from each other in human awareness until Gd did so. So Bereshit refers to the beginning of distinguishing for humans “heavens,” the inner, subtle, abstract levels of the details of God, from “earth,” the concrete aspect.
God is always One, Unity in Diversity, as it is described in Maharishi Vedic Science so it is necessary to consider what Torah means by “beginning.”
The best way of looking at the meaning of ‘beginning” is that it refers to any point in the infinite liveliness of Gd – separation and unification are always going on, everywhere and so at any point heaven and earth are always being separated and united.
Within every point is the Whole Unbounded Ocean of Gd and everything is always going on everywhere, in sequence and also in simultaneity. To Gd, Gd is always Totally Present, Infinitely Lively, Infinitely Silent, Omnidirectional, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omni-Joyful, Omni-Loving, and so the idea of beginning is just part of Gd’s “let’s pretend to be limited.”
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, in his “Body, Mind and Soul: Kabbalah on Human Physiology, Disease and Healing,” notes that “create” and “heal” in Hebrew have the same root: b-r-a: from this angle, we can say that the beginning of Torah is always the beginning of healing, of teshuvah, of healing we humans of our limits and restoring us to our unlimited status as impulses of One in which the Full Ocean of One functions and also restoring us to full memory of the reality that only One exists and we are This.
So, creation – healing – begins, when Torah, the fundamental liveliness of Gd, begins to be perceived by individual humans.
We humans are individual impulses of Gd who pretends to be limited for the fun of playing Hide and Seek Peek-a-Boo in us, so He, pretending to be we limited souls, can have the fun of seeking as us, and Gd as Gd, can have the pleasure of hinting Reality through Torah sounds, Torah stories, Torah mitzvah and whatever way He wishes.
In this game, this Game, little by little, and also suddenly, we find – we Find!
Gd dissolves the veils of limits and reveals to us that Gd is All, within us and all around us, everywhere, One without a Second.
And this can happen with any sound of Torah, any word, any parshah, even the last one as we suddenly See and Know the Truth within the Stories.
And because Torah in the book is only the most infinitesimal aspect of Torah as One with Gd, Torah can hint to us and reveal to us through the taste of orange juice, when we’re eating breakfast, through the sounds of our footsteps when we are walking down a street; through our dreams when we are snoozing – at any time, any place.
Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good And Evil as well as the serpent, are within us, ready to be clearly experienced as Omnidirectional, All-in-All Points of One, and the duality between Gd and the uncreated creation, is ready to be experienced as the Fun of Gd, always within Gd as One.
So, too, are the all the details of Torah as the Book and Torah as Gd.
As we do our best to “Be still and know!” “to love Gd with all our heart, all our soul and all our might,” to “love our neighbor (and our enemy as someone said) as our self,” as our Self, we begin to see, hear, taste, touch, smell the Beauty of Gd in every leaf, every sound, every bite of food – everywhere.
Very encouraging!
Let’s keep on doing it.
Practice! Practice! Practice!
Baruch HaShem.