Parashat Ki Tetze 5786 – 08/22/2026
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.
Devarim 21:10 – 25:18
Dear readers,
There are a number of short weeks coming up for me. On 8/31 I will be traveling to Fairfield to bring someone to the last part of the digital TTC, and the week of 9/20 I will be picking him up (Monday of that week is also Yom Kippur). The week after that is Sukkot. What this means is that for the next weeks my entries will probably be a bit shorter than normal, which many may see as a positive development! If need be, we’ll dip into the archives for some oldies but goodies.
Bob
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Up until now Rambam has been presenting Aristotle’s arguments from the perspective of someone who denies the existence of Gd. Later commentators now try to show that even if we allow for the existence of Gd, Who created the universe, that universe must still be eternal.
There also are methods set forth by those who came after him, methods that they derived from his philosophy and by which they established the eternity of the world by starting from the deity, may His name be sublime.
One of them is as follows. They say that if Gd, may His name be sublime, has produced the world in time after its having been nonexistent, Gd must have been an agent in potentia before He had created the world; and after He had created it, He became an agent in actu. Gd had therefore passed over from potentiality to actuality. Consequently, there had been in Him, may He be exalted, a certain possibility and there indubitably must have been in His case something that caused Him to pass over from potentiality into actuality. This also is a great difficulty. Every intelligent man ought to reflect concerning its solution and the disclosing of its secret.
Rambam actually present four methods of proof, but all of them seem to revolve around the same question – if Gd is going to bring something into existence from nothing, then that would indicate some change in Gd. But if Gd is transcendental to the entire world of change, Gd must be unchanging, beyond any alteration either internal or external. And indeed, if Gd is like us, human and finite, this would be true. But of course, Gd is not like us. Gd is infinite, transcendental to the world, transcendental to time and space. The problem with the logic as applied to Gd is that the transcendent doesn’t behave like the finite – in particular it unites opposites and resolves paradoxes by going beyond the categories that produce those paradoxes.
An example of the kind of paradox we’re talking about is the “contradiction” between human beings’ free will and Gd’s foreknowledge. If Gd knows what we are going to do, how free are we? And if we have free choice, how can Gd know what we’ll choose? Rambam answered the question by saying that Gd’s knowledge is not like our knowledge – Gd’s knowledge is not distinguishable from His essence. Just as Gd’s essence transcends time, so Gd’s knowledge transcends time – it’s as if “below” time, seeing the whole stretch of time “at once” (even that is too time-bound, but what can we do – we live in time). In other words, the categories we use to parse reality are categories that are applicable to the world of sense perception – objects and logic. But they break down when applied to the transcendent.
A second example is the argument over whether Gd is transcendent or immanent (in-dwelling in the world). Again, this seems to be an either-or situation, with no middle ground. And indeed, from a finite perspective, where something is either inside or outside of something else, there is no middle ground. But of course, Gd is not finite. Just like Gd’s knowledge is not like our knowledge, so Gd’s existence is not like our existence. We exist as finite beings, while Gd’s existence is infinite in space and time. That infinite existence can encompass opposites, like transcendence and immanence.
We have tried to explain it using the example of the Unified Field. According to Unified Field theory, everything in physics is nothing other than vibrations of the Unified Field. So is the Unified Field transcendent to creation, or does it dwell in the creation. The example indicates both. The Unified Field is something that exists above and beyond any of its expressions. On the other hand, the Unified Field permeates all of creation – it is all of creation. It is the “stuff” of creation; no part of creation is empty of the Unified Field. Gd too creates from within Himself. He is transcendental to space and time, matter and energy, yet the whole of creation is within Gd. As our Sages say, “the world is not the place of Gd; Gd is the Place of the world.” So Gd is both transcendental and immanent.
Does this make sense? I’m as stuck in waking state as the next guy, so in a very real way it’s not something that makes sense to me either. The difference is that in my 55 years of TM, I have had the opportunity to listen to Maharishi’s description of Unity Consciousness, and I’ve had enough glimpses of unity that the description feels correct. But in truth, this can really be understood only in Unity Consciousness.
Rambam is going to go on to refute Aristotle’s positions, and Gd willing we will take this up next week.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Ki Teitzei
“Ki Teitzei means “when you go out.”
The parshah continues: “to battle against thy enemies and the Lord shall deliver them into thy hands…”
This is a reminder that, literally, in battle, victory goes to those whom Gd supports; symbolically, that in any area of life, to be successful we need to align ourselves with Gd’s will. Battle is never really battle: it is Wholeness restoring a part to its reality as a vibration of Wholeness.
This parshah gives at least 74 mitzvot, ways to align with Gd’s Will, out of the 613 given in Torah (chabad.org ) and some unifying themes on the material level are kindness, integrity and purity – all themes which we can strive to live in our lives today in our marriages, business relations, relations with strangers. In the Full sense the theme is always: Wholeness is always expressing itself through us, through all souls, so as to restore Full Awareness to us.
The opening illustration is in the case of the beautiful captive a soldier desires to take to wife.
The captive is to be given time to grieve and then marriage can take place. This is kindness.
If the soldier wishes to divorce the wife, then she shall be set free, not sold for money, not treated as a slave. This is kindness and integrity – she has been the wife, the relationship was entered into honestly (at least by the soldier – the woman’s rights have not been considered) and also honest relations: she not be treated as property, as a business commodity.
What does it mean symbolically? To me, “go out to battle” means, symbolically to extend Wholeness into specific details, desires, that have not yet become directed to Wholeness, absorbed in Wholeness.
A beautiful captive is a desire that is very appealing but doesn’t seem on the face of it to be aligned to our desire for Wholeness, for return to Primordial Oneness. It is a desire that needs to be given some time before we would act on it: perhaps after a while, we will see that the desire can fit into the routine things we do every day to deepen our experience of Wholeness and to spread it into areas of our life, of life in general that it has not yet reached.
I wish for all of us that we will enjoy the ability to divorce, to let go desires that are not aligned with God, to transform the ones that have possibilities into ones that actually help us align with God, (“take them to wife”) and that we will arrive at a state where we experience that everything is Wholeness; there is no going out, there are no enemies, there is no battle, there are no captives and all the world is experienced as our Self, the Self – Gd.
Baruch HaShem.