Parashat Noach 5785 – 11/02/2024
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.
Bereshit 6:9-11:32
Rambam begins a discussion of Gd as Creator. This goes to perhaps the most fundamental question of both religion and philosophy – how does a singular, unitary Gd give rise to multiplicity? R. Jonathan Sacks (who held a PhD in Philosophy from the University of London) put the difference in approach between philosophers and religious thinker in his usual succinct way: “The philosopher sees diversity and asks, ‘Where is there room for Gd’? The religious believer knows there is Gd and asks, ‘Where is there room for Creation?’“ The idea of unity and diversity coexisting seems to be a contradiction in terms.
Rambam begins his discussion by defining Gd in philosophical terms:
The philosophers, as you know, designate Gd, may He be exalted, as the first cause and the first ground. On the other hand, those who are generally known as Mutakallimūn avoid these designations very deliberately and designate Him as the maker and think there is a great difference between our saying cause and ground and our saying maker. For they say that if we say that He is a cause, the existence of that which is caused follows necessarily, and that this leads to the doctrine of the eternity of the world and of the world’s necessarily following from Gd. If, however, we say that He is the maker, it does not necessarily follow that that which is made exists together with Him. For the maker sometimes precedes the act of making. But they only consider a maker as preceding the act of making. Now this is the assertion of people who do not make a distinction between what is in potentia and what is in actu.
First, Rambam takes up the issue of whether Gd’s attribute of being the creator argues for the eternity of the creation. The question is, if Gd is the cause of something, does that mean that that which is caused has to be temporally coextensive with its cause? In that case, the creation, which Gd caused to exist, would be eternal in the same way that Gd is eternal. Others distinguish between calling Gd the creator and calling Gd the maker. The idea of this distinction is that the maker can make things in time and space, and the eternity of creation problem does not arise. (The Mutakallimūn were scholars of a school of Islamic philosophy – the Kalām – that flourished roughly from the 10th to the 14th centuries.)
It is unclear to me why being the cause of something necessarily requires the effect and the cause to overlap in time, and especially when the cause is eternal, which means it (in this case Gd) is entirely beyond considerations of time. If this were the case, not only would creation be eternal, every tiny piece of creation, all of which has Gd as its ultimate cause, would also be eternal, and of course we see that this is not the case. Generations may come and go, but Gd goes on forever.
I think part of the issue here lies in our understanding of time and eternity. Maharishi wrote, “Time is a concept we use to measure eternity.” Eternity is actually not just a long time, even an infinite amount of time. Eternity is actually transcendental to time. It just is – perhaps we can say that eternity is the temporal component of Pure Being, the completely abstract, transcendental layer of life. Time is actually something created, just as space is something created. This is being borne out by the unified field theory physics; the unified field is transcendental to space and time, and space and time are actually patterns of vibration of the Unified Field. Since time and space are creations, the whole notion of whether a creation can be eternal, like the Creator, doesn’t get started, in my opinion.
The question is, we see that everything exists within space and time. Furthermore, the best astronomical evidence tells us that the universe was created 13+ billion years ago. In other words, we can run the film of cosmic evolution back 13+ billion years until we get to a singularity, in which all space and time, all matter and energy, are compressed into a single point that does not itself exist within space and time. It is impossible to inquire what happened before this point began expanding, because this point is beyond time and the concepts of “before” and “after” make no sense.
Now if there is no time, and we cannot put things into a temporal sequence, our ordinary sense of causality also goes out the window. The idea of causality, and before and after, were already challenged by Einstein’s Special Relativity, but if we are dealing with a level of existence that is beyond time altogether, then the notion A causes B cannot have any meaning in the sense that we usually take causality. Again, when we’re talking about Gd’s creation of the universe, and trying to infer from that the eternity of the universe, we’re really treading on the proverbial thin ice.
As you can probably surmise, Rambam has much more to say on the topic, and we will return to it next week, Gd willing.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Noach
“Noach” means “rest” as in “Be Still and Know that I Am Gd” (Psalm 46:10). To Noach whose stillness allowed him to hear Gd’s Words and to follow them, Gd gave the task of keeping life on Earth alive while most of it was destroyed.
In Parashat Noach, our world begins again after Gd destroys its population, all but those in the Ark.
In Bereishit, many say Creation begins; others say, the separation of Heaven and earth begins; I say it is not the beginning, it is not a new creation. It is another joyful cycle in the infinitely rapidly cycling that is the vibration of Torah, the Liveliness of Gd. Torah and Gd are One.
It is not that there is ever a new Creation, Gd is eternally complete: all is already accomplished in Gd. The Whole of Gd is in every point of Gd and at every point, every moment, cycling infinitely rapidly, Gd reveals Unity separating into Heaven and Earth, into Subtle and Gross and returning to Unity. All of Torah is always taking place in an infinitesimal instant and also timelessly and in Infinite Cosmic Time.
In Parashat Noach, we see the story of how the diversity of the Gross is dissolved into the Ocean of Subtlety and yet an Ark with the seeds of diversity remains to reveal that the Wholeness is always there, diverse and also unified.
Parashat Noach inspires us to be aware that we can experience this Wholeness. It begins by describing Noah as righteous, perfect in his generations, walking with Gd. Since all but Noah’s family were destroyed in the Flood, we are all descendants of Noah and have the potential to be perfect although clearly neither today, throughout Torah, nor throughout history do we see more than a few people fulfilling this potential.
We can also be inspired by remembering that not only are we descendants of righteous Noah but also as Bereishit says ““… in the image of Gd He made man. “ Genesis 9:6
Since there is nothing but Gd, to say that Gd made man in Gd’s own Image means that we have the potential to remember we are roles Gd Plays, and we can rise to a level where we are perfectly comfortable playing our roles in Gd’s Play. We can do this by favoring those thoughts and actions that do the positive mitzvot Torah ordains and avoiding the negative ones.
And yet we can wonder “what is keeping us from realizing this full potential?” My answer is simply that whenever Gd wants to Reveal to us that we are Gd playing the roles of us, Gd will do it. In the meantime, everything we experience is a clue in the puzzle and we need to keep guessing and acting, refining our guesses with each result we experience from our actions.
Nonetheless, even in this state of massive ignorance compared to the Omniscience of Gd, I experience life as joyful, blissful with a lot of teshuvah, return to Oneness, already taking place and it seems to me that many in our congregation and community can say the same.
So, life is fun, even in our state of ignorance, and we enjoy the safety of a bit of an ark of Joy and kind actions that helps us flourish in the floods of ignorance, misinformation and selfishness that are so common in our world.
This parshah tells us one thing we should do to avoid falling more deeply into ignorance. Do not think that any action of ours can reach Gd. Only Gd Knows Gd and only Gd’s Grace can reveal Gd within us. Forgetting this, in their vanity, descendants of Noah sought to build a tower that would reach the heavens. Prior to this attempt, they were a single people, speaking a single language. To prevent them from wasting time with their project, (which could never succeed since a gross building made of gross materials can never reach the subtle realm: heaven is not in the sky, it is in the delicate loving feelings that are primordial vibrations of Gd.) Gd limited their understanding so they were divided into 70 different nations, each speaking a different language. This separation continues in our times but we see a rise of Love, loving Wholeness, loving details. Through kindness, we are experiencing deeper and finer levels of feeling, of Love; we are learning to link the diversity of life with the Unity. We are learning to create the effect that the tower was intended to create but without the vanity: we are learning to experience the subtle and to experience Gd, the Wholeness, in which all levels of subtlety and coarseness are but Joyful Vibrations of Gd Knowing Gd.
The parshah ends with Terah, taking his family, including Abraham and Sara (at this time, Abram and Sarai) toward Canaan, which will be the Promised Land. The family does not enter Canaan, they settle on the way, in Haran. “Haran” means “mountain,” “Canaan” means “synchronicity.” We are getting a taste of the fruit of Torah, the last parshah, V’Zot Haberacha, in which Gd has Moses ascend a mountain from which he can see Canaan. From this mountain, Abraham and Sara have the possibility for experiencing the synchronicity that unites the diversity of the separate nations, languages.
The next parshah, Lech Lechah, is often translated as “Go forth, your self” or, as those with a bit of experience of the self as Self, can read, “Go to your Self.” Go to the Promised Land outside you by revealing to your self, the Promised Land within you, the Self.
Since Gd will later speak with Abraham as he did with Noah, we see in the ending of this parshah a foretaste of this return of perfection to our world, to humanity. We are seeing a foretaste of a world in which we can synchronize diversity and create unity, common language, common experience, while delighting in and creating ever more and more delightful diverse expressions of Unity.
We see signs of this in our community; not that I know either that we have members to whom Gd speaks or that I know that we don’t but I do feel that we are dedicating our lives toward right action, service and a return to Wholeness, Oneness. We are learning to cherish each other and to meet, by Zoom or in person, on the level of fine feeling, of Love.
Baruch HaShem