Parashat Emor 5784 — 05/18/2024
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.
Vayikra 21:1-24:23
In chapter 60 Rambam gives some analogies (“parables”) to make the idea of negative attributes clearer:
Assume that a man has acquired true knowledge regarding the existence of a ship, but does not know to what it is that this term is applied: namely, whether it is applied to a substance or to an accident. Then it became clear to some other individual that a ship is not an accident; afterwards it became clear to yet another individual that it is not a mineral; then it became clear to someone else that it is not a living being; then it became clear to someone else that it is not a plant forming a continuum with the earth; then it became clear to someone else that it is not one body naturally forming a continuum; then it became clear to someone else that it does not possess a simple shape as do tables and doors; then it became clear to someone else that it is not a sphere, and to another individual that it is not conical, and to yet another individual that it is not spherical and not possessed of equal sides, and to someone else again that it is not solid all through. Now it is clear that the last individual has nearly achieved, by means of these negative attributes, the representation of the ship as it is. He has, as it were, attained equality with one who has represented the ship as being a body consisting of timber, a body that is hollow, oblong, and composed of a number of pieces of timber; that is, he has attained equality with one who has represented the ship by means of affirmative attributes.
Now of course the ship is a concrete object and has many more positive attributes than Rambam has listed, and there are many more things that it is not. When we’re talking about Gd, of course, Gd is not any (single) thing, nor is Gd a composite of things, and no finite list of negative assertions can exhaust the level of abstraction at which Gd exists.
The process of abstraction is the process of negation of specifics. For example, I am currently sitting (or rather, slouching) in an office chair. It has a black, faux-leather seat, a central shaft leading down to a base that has 5 legs, each with a wheel. Now some chairs have 6 wheeled legs, some have 4, some 3, some have legs without wheels, etc. We can therefore abstract away, or negate, the particulars of the legs and wheels, and we get a more generic office chair with black faux-leather seats etc. We can abstract away the color of the seat and get a more generic chair, and we can abstract away the type of seat, and so on. By negating positive attributes, we progressively work our way to more abstract and more generic chairs, then to more and more generic furniture, more and more generic household items, more and more generic objects, etc. The end result of this process is Pure Being, which is completely abstract, having no qualities, no “accidents,” and is the negation of all qualities.
As we have mentioned, Maharishi has described this intellectual process as a means some have used to generate the experience of the transcendent. Whatever we think the transcendent to be, we remind ourselves that in fact, it’s not that and cannot be that, because whatever “that” is, it will be a limitation, and the transcendent has no limitations. I imagine the idea is to cultivate the mind to understand the transcendent so thoroughly that it becomes a reality in consciousness, but it seems like it would be a very laborious process. It seems to me that this may be what Rambam is talking about as a technique for coming to know Gd, although he has explicitly only been talking about it theoretically.
In TM we perform this process, but on the level of direct experience. As we experience the mantra on finer and finer levels, it gets vaguer, more transparent, less bounded. This is an experiential negation of the boundaries of the particular thought leads to a direct experience of the transcendent, rather than just thoughts or opinions about the transcendent. And it is experience of the transcendent which is what our faith demands of us, as Jeremiah (Chapter 31) tells us: … and they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them… (Incidentally, I didn’t cite the verse because different sources say verse 33 or verse 34. This is not very common, but the fact that there are conflicting traditions over the division of Scripture into verses is noted in the Talmud. The division into Chapters is an innovation by Christian printers, so obviously it cannot predate the mid-1400’s, when printing began in Europe.) Jeremiah says we will know Gd, not that we will speculate about Gd.
One thing that we notice immediately about Rambam’s analogy is how totally inadequate it is, even on its own terms, let alone as applied to Gd. Rambam gives us some examples in the case of a specific object, a ship. It is clear that he has not exhausted all the positive attributes or negated everything that should be negated about the ship. There are an infinite number of things that a ship could be, and there are an infinite number of things that a ship is not. So the analogy is flawed with respect to Gd also, Who cannot be limited in any way, Who is not any thing. The only thing that can be analogous to the infinite in any way is something equally infinite. In other words, anything finite will be inadequate as an analogy to the infinite.
People often ask me if the Unified Field of physics is the same as Pure Consciousness, or if it’s just an analogy. The answer is that I don’t know. I find the parallels between the Unified Field (as I understand it) and Pure Consciousness (as Maharishi explains it) to be close and compelling, yet one is physical and the other is not. Of course physicists have not really unlocked the secrets of the Unified Field, while Pure Consciousness has been thoroughly explored and explicated by the Sages of the Vedic tradition. Whether physics will catch up to the Vedic tradition, or whether it will only approach asymptotically I guess we will have to see.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Emor
“Emor” means “speak”: Gd commands Moses to speak to the sons of Aaron and to Aaron, Gd’s Voice speaking through an individual to a group, just as each Sound of Torah is an Individual Sound vibrating within the Whole, which is Gd. Repeatedly in Torah Gd has said “Be thou holy for I am Holy.” In this parshah, we see Gd’s commands about the nature of Holiness, purity. and the nature of “speech,” human and Divine. Gd’s Speech is Pure, a model for Moses’ speech, human speech.
The overall context of Emor is that it is a parshah in “Torah,” a Vibration of Gd, the Liveliness of Gd, Gd Speaking within Gd to Gd but passing through Moses to our ancestors and today available to us in books, scrolls, recitations, recording and, especially, in our own cognitions–Torah is One with Gd, beginningless, endless, eternal.. Most important, it is available to us in our Awareness when our Heart is open.
Since Gd has no beginning or end, “Beresheit Bara Elokim,” the first words of Torah, cannot be “In the beginning, Gd created,” but “in the beginning of Gd’s revealing,” the beginning and the revealing to be found in every point of Gd, everywhere in Gd’s Speech. This means that Gd plays hide-and-seek within Gd – the unlimited, omniscient, pretends to be limited and a seeker of knowledge, of wisdom. To this role of Gd, Gd reveals the Nature of the process through which Gd appears to be void and then within the void, Gd reveals the range from apparent emptiness to Fullness, a ladder in time, a simultaneity which is also sequence, a never beginning, never ending cycle through which we find the emptiness within the detail and the detail within the emptiness.
This description shows us how each action of ours begins with our becoming aware of the silence of our awareness, the Self-Referral level of our awareness, always fulfilled, and unfolds more and more concrete and wide-ranging manifestations as increasing awareness of the gap between our Self-Referral level of awareness and our individual awareness produces a desire of ours to perform actions that will narrow and eliminate the gap and restore our individual awareness to Self-Referral Awareness, Total Awareness.
Parashat Emor shows four groups of commands that reveal the detail within the word “speak.” It continues the Book of Leviticus: “Leviticus” derives from “Levi,” attached, pledged to Gd. This is specifically referring to the Levites, the priests, who attached and pledged themselves to Gd during their service when the Mishkan and the Temples stood.
At any time, and certainly today, whether we are Levites or not, we pledge and attach ourselves to Gd, through not only our actions and our daily prayers, ideally through what we learned (and continue) to learn through our religion, but certainly through any innocent prayer for Gd to reveal to us Gd’s Will and to give us the purity to do It so that every action of ours is innocent, kind and loving, narrowing the gap between our small selves and our Big Self and attaching us to Gd.
The essence of Gd’s Will is that we should “Love the Lrd thy Gd with all thy heart, all thy soul and all thy might” and “shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Gd may be a bit abstract but our neighbor is concrete and so something simple like helping a friend, a family member, or a stranger; something complex like doing a large project for an international organization or business that we feel is helping our world to become more pure helps us move in the direction of loving Gd.
Prayer, the ideal speech, in Judaism is much more a recognition of the Blessedness, the Blissfulness of Gd, than it is a request for something. Our actions allow this Blessedness to increase in our awareness and flow through us when they are not just for our individual self but for the community, for the Harmony of Life.
The commands in Parshah Emor can be divided into four sections:
1. The commands about purity of the Kohanim, the priests who are direct descendants of Aaron, himself of the tribe of Levi.
2. Establishing Festivals and the Sabbath – times when there are special rules to be pure and celebrate purity
3. Lighting the menorah – light that symbolizes the victory of purity over impurity.
4. Penalties for blasphemy, murder, destruction of property – very clear descriptions of actions to avoid so that we remain pure, grow in purity, act with love and do not suffer or cause suffering.
In the beginning of Parashat Emor, we see Gd, Who is Holy, Speaking to Moses, an open channel for Gd’s Speech and a good model for us to help us act so that we are holy as Gd is Holy.
In the conclusion of the parshah, we see the consequences of blasphemous speech, speech which moves away from Holiness rather than toward it. The penalty was stoning to death. This is certainly not the penalty today but the penalty at any time is that with blasphemous speech our nerves and heart become hard, like stone, and little by little, if we do not return to purity, we stone ourselves to a joyless life, to suffering, to death of our spirit, and eventually, to death of our bodies. This is a very good reason to speak in praise of Gd and to speak encouragingly to all, encouraging all to act purely so they return to Wholeness.
Parashat Emor is a good one to read aloud or silently, to listen to, to act on so that we continue to speak holiness and to act in holiness.
Baruch HaShem