Parashat Chayei Sarah 5786 – 11/15/2025
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 23:1-25:18
In this final chapter of Part I, Rambam considers the proofs that the Mutakallimūn bring for the non-corporeality of Gd. He doesn’t really think much of their proofs: “The methods and the argumentations of the Mutakallimūn purporting to refute the doctrine of corporeality are very feeble, even feebler than their proofs in favor of the belief in unity. For the refutation of the corporeality [of Gd] is, in their opinion, as it were a ramification necessarily deriving from the root of the belief in unity.” The argument is that all bodies are composite, and anything composite must be assembled, and therefore is dependent on something else to assemble it. This is obviously not true of Gd.
Rambam identifies three methods of proof used by the Mutakallimūn:
The first method: This method depends on the premise that all of creation is composed of atoms. If Gd were corporeal then, He would also be composed of atoms. If Gd’s Divinity inheres in just one of these atoms, what is the use of the others? If all the atoms that make up Gd have Divinity, then there would be multiple divinities, not one, as we presume Gd is (and the Mutakallimūn agree). Rambam counters that if Gd’s body were not made up of atoms, but were one continuous substance that does not admit of division, then this argument falls apart. Presumably, this is why the Mutakallimūn insist on the atomic nature of all substances.
The second method: This refers to the impossibility of resemblance. “For He does not resemble any of His creatures. Now if He were a body, He would resemble bodies.” All bodies resemble one another in respect to corporeality. In other words, if Gd were corporeal, it would bring the Creator down to the level of creatures, and that is impossible. To create something, one must, in some way, encompass that creation. The Creator has to transcend all of creation, and nothing corporeal is truly transcendent.
Rambam refutes this argument in a very interesting way: “I do not concede the denial of resemblance. What demonstration have you that it is not admissible that Gd should in any way resemble a thing He has created – by Gd! – unless you rely in this point, I mean in the denial of Gd’s in any way resembling a created thing, upon the text of a prophetic book? In that case the denial of corporeality would be a doctrine accepted on the authority of a tradition, and not an intellectually cognized doctrine.” Now Rambam certainly does not think that referring to prophetic books is an illegitimate way of gaining knowledge, Gd forbid. The critique is that the proof is not complete by itself, and requires a deus ex machina, so to speak, to shore up its premises.
Rambam goes on to assert that the terms “body” and “form” are applied equivocally to the heavenly and earthly realms: “For matter here is not identical with matter there, and the forms here are not identical with the form there; but the terms “matter and “form” are likewise applied equivocally to what is here as well as to the heavenly spheres.” (This wording, incidentally, is reminiscent of the passage in Isaiah 55 that is read as the Haftarah at Minchah of public fast days: For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are My ways your ways, says Gd. But as the heavens are high above earth, so are My ways high above your ways and My thoughts above your thoughts.) This being the case, any argument based on resemblance, or the lack thereof, breaks down. We have no data about the nature of matter, or form, or bodies, in the celestial realms, and we therefore can’t say for sure whether Gd resembles anything in creation, or does not.
Of course, from the point of view of modern physics, there is really no distinction between matter and forces that are found on earth and in the “heavens.” We can take the same physics we observe on earth and apply it to the cosmos, and draw conclusions about the origin and evolution of the created universe. The conclusions (albeit tentative, like all science) are that all the particles of matter and all the forces in creation are different modes of vibration of one underlying Unified Field. The mechanics of the Unified Field allow us to understand how a completely abstract entity rises to give the various physical structures we perceive in creation – stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, planets, life – the full range. The basis of all bodies is something non-physical, in the sense that it is not finite and bounded, like all the “bodies” we perceive. Clearly then, Gd can certainly not be said to be physical, as Gd must be at least as abstract as the most abstract level of creation, the Unified Field.
The third method: This method seems to be the most reasonable one of all:
They say if the deity were a body, it would be finite, which is correct. If, however, it were finite, it would have a certain magnitude and a certain permanent shape, which is likewise a correct necessary consequence. Then they say: it is admissible that the deity qua body could have been of a bigger or a smaller size or of a different shape than any life or shape whatever. Accordingly its being particularized to a certain size and shape requires something that particularized it.
Rambam doesn’t think much of this method either. Since, according to their 10th premise, anything we can imagine is possibly existent, the deity can encompass all these possibilities as actualities, and therefore doesn’t need to have anything outside itself to particularize it, like finite objects do. Rambam rejects this whole approach, arguing that in fact we have to derive propositions about Gd working from what actually exists, not from assumptions that effectively beg the question we are trying to prove.
I don’t want to referee this dispute, but I would like to point out that the discoveries of modern physics and the understanding of ancient Vedic Science both point to a fundamental flaw in the whole approach of the Kalām and the Aristotelians. Their entire understanding is based on the existence of an objective world with objects and their interactions. This is the world of stars and galaxies, tables and chairs, atoms and molecules – all finite things that can be measured. Physics and Vedic Science identify a basic, underlying substratum – the Unified Field and Pure Consciousness respectively – that is completely abstract, unbounded and eternal. This substratum can vibrate virtually within itself, and it is these vibrations which we perceive on the surface as objects and their properties. But a table is nothing more than a complex pattern of vibration of the Unified Field, and my computer resting on it is another pattern, and the fact that the computer doesn’t fall through the table is due to the way the vibrations of one interact with the vibrations of the other. Our explanation that the table has the quality of solidity doesn’t really answer the question – it just requires us to ask why it appears solid.
Our waking state awareness of the objective world as separate from our subjective world is a natural result of limited vision, and was all that has been available for many thousands of years. We are very fortunate to have been given the technology of consciousness that allows us to pierce through the veil of objective reality and see and understand the true nature of the world and our place in it.
Rambam has now concluded the first part of Moreh Nevukhim – leaving us with many questions, which he promises he will answer in the next two parts. This also concludes the first of the two volumes of Moreh Nevukhim that I have. It’s taken 5 years and 5 additional parshiyyot to complete the Introduction and part I. I will be 77 in about 3 weeks, and I give thanks to Gd and to Maharishi that I’ve been able to get this far. Gd willing I will be able to complete the second volume as well.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Chayei Sarah
After Sarah passes, with Gd’s Presence in her as it was and is in Abraham, Abraham sends his servant, Eliezer, to look for a spouse for his son, Isaac.
What qualities would we want in a servant who we send to an unfamiliar world to select a spouse for our beloved child?
What strategy would the servant use to select exactly the right spouse?
Abraham sends his trusted servant Eliezer to look for a wife for his son Isaac.
Eliezer’s name means “Help of my Gd”: Eliezer is servant of Gd first, Abraham second.
This is the perfect quality we want in a servant: the servant will act according to Gd’s Will and our will be fulfilled in alignment with Gd’s Will.
Abraham, therefore, trusts not only Eliezer’s loyalty but his competence – his competence on zeroing in on the right bride and his judgment in making sure the bride really is the right bride.
Eliezer’s strategy is not to stay within his limited ability but to ask Gd for guidance. As he approaches a well in the country to which he is sent he prays in his heart that Gd will bring a woman to the well who will offer to give him not only a drink from her pitcher that he asks for but also that she will offer to provide water for his camels also, even without his asking. Eliezar values generosity as a sign of love and appropriateness.
Before he even finishes this prayer, a woman appears who fulfills his request.
This a sign of considerable purity in Eliezer and also in the woman, who is Rebekah and who becomes Isaac’s wife.
Rebekah leads Eliezer to her family and Eliezer explains his mission: to find a bride for his master Abraham’s son, Isaac.
“Will you marry him?” his family asks.
“Yes, I will”, Rebekah replies, a sign not only of generosity but of her own judgment that Eliezer is connecting her with the love that Gd intends for her, a marriage that will enable her to be not only a good and happy wife, but a good servant of Gd.
“Will you leave tomorrow?” Eliezer asks.
“Yes, I will”, Rebekah replies, a sign of trust.
And when Rebekah meets Isaac they love each other and Isaac is comforted for the loss of his mother, proof that Eliezer was a good and competent servant, one who fulfilled his master’s wishes, one to whom Gd responds even before the wish of his heart is completely stated.
In our lives we do our best “to love Gd with all our heart and soul” and “to love our neighbor as ourself” so that we are good servants of ourselves, our families, our communities and Gd and also we are trusting recipients of Gd’s messengers and servants.
We do our best to be trustable, competent, loving, generous and to welcome in the Shekinah, Gd’s bride, not only on Shabbat but every moment and to be Gd’s bride ourselves. And beyond this experience, we seek to restore ourselves and to be restored to the Oneness, within which the duality of Gd and us exists. This is the marriage of the self to the Self and the marriage of the Self to the Self.
Not only the meaning of this parshah helps us in this delightful activity but even more fundamentally, the sound.
Here is Rabbi Michael Slavin, from the Chabad Brooklyn central synagogue, where the Lubavitcher Rebbe presided, reading “Chayei Sarah”:
Shabbat Shalom,
Steve