Parashat Toledot 5786 – 11/22/2025
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 25:19-28:9
Rambam introduces the second part of his treatise by listing 25 premises which he will use to prove that Gd exists and that He has no body:
1. The existence of any infinite magnitude is impossible.
2. The existence of magnitudes, the number of which is infinite is impossible – that is, if they exist together.
These first two principles are fairly straightforward according to classical physics. Before Relativity and the curvature of space-time, it was assumed that the universe was flat and infinite in extent, and that time stretched eternally in both directions. The objects in the universe, however, cannot be of infinite extent. Quantum mechanics began to challenge the notion that objects were localized bits of matter, and we now understand that what we see / interpret as particles are actually excitations of underlying fields, which themselves fill space and time. The whole notion of “existences” is called into question. We have discussed these notions already, so we will continue our list.
3. The existence of causes and effects of which the number is infinite is impossible, even if they are not endowed with magnitude. For instance, the assumption that one particular intellect, for example, has as its cause a second intellect, and that the cause of this second intellect is a third one, and that of the third a fourth, and so on to infinity, is likewise clearly impossible.
It seems to me that this third principle is like the first two, except in the time dimension, rather than space. Naturally, after Relativity, it’s easier to see time and space as intimately related, whereas before that, they were absolutely different. In any event, all 3 spatial dimensions and the one time dimension were held to be independent of one another, stretching to infinity in both directions, and containing objects and events (or sequences of events) that cannot fill their full extent, but must be finite. There is a very important distinction between time and space, at least on the surface level, and that is that the two directions of space along any axis are intrinsically the same (only differing if there are objects in one direction or the other), time has a definite direction. We are born, we age, and we die. Things decay, they don’t spontaneously form absent an external source of energy and/or material passing through the system. We may return to this point later.
4. Change exists in four categories: it exists in the category of substance, the changes occurring in a substance being generation and corruption. It exists in the category of quantity, namely as growth and decrease. It exists in the category of quality, namely, as alteration. It exists in the category of place, namely, as the motion of translation. It is this change in the category of place that is more especially called motion.
5. Every motion is a change and transition from potentiality to actuality.
The characteristic of the relative field of existence is change. Rambam is a great categorizer, as was Aristotle, and he lays out for us the various kinds of changes that can take place in an object: in substance, size, quality and place. These categories are all fine when we restrict our vision to macroscopic objects. If we go down even to the atomic level, we find that changes in quality are actually just changes in the way atoms bond together, but the atoms themselves remain unchanged. On the level of quantum field theory, changes in number are just changes in the energy level of the field, which itself remains unchanged in its essence. On the level of the Unified Field, all changes are just shifts in the patterns of vibration of the Unified Field, which itself is unchanged. The upshot is that all levels and types of change are in fact different patterns of vibration of an unchanging field. We will see how this alternative view plays out in the rest of the premises.
6. Of motions, some are essential and some accidental, some are violent and some are motions of a part – this being a species of accidental motion. Now essential motion is, for example, the translation of a body from one place to another. Accidental motion is, for example, when a blackness existing in this particular body is said to be translated from one place to another. Violent motion is, for example, the motion of a stone upwards through the action of something constraining it to that [RAR: i.e. motion that is forced by something external, that “does violence” to the object’s essential nature]. Motion of a part is, for example, the motion of a nail in a ship; for when the ship is in motion, we say that the nail is likewise in motion…
Motion is going to be an important concept, and especially “violent” motion, because that is motion that is caused by something else. Since, according to premise 3 there cannot be an infinite chain of causation (movers and movers of movers), the chain of causation of motion at least has to end at some point with a Prime Mover, which is responsible for all motion in creation. A similar argument can be made for all other changes – there must be a Prime Changer which is the source of all change in creation. The following premises will take up the issues of change and motion in more detail, and Gd willing we will start to tackle them next week.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Toledot
“Toldot” means “generations, descendants.” More basic than the literal meaning is the meaning “stages of evolution.” We will look at this parshah from this point of view.
The parshah begins with “and these are the generations of Isaac” and tells the story of Isaac’s sons, Jacob and Esau from whom generations will be born, and of Gd’s promise to Isaac that if Isaac will follow Gd, as did Isaac’s father Abraham, then his descendants will be multiplied “like the stars of the heavens” and the land and all nations will be blessed by Isaac’s descendants. “Heaven” symbolizes “Wholeness” and “stars” symbolize the details of Wholeness, the details through which Heaven sends its grace to human and all beings. Similarly, “land” symbolizes “Wholeness” and “nations” symbolizes the details of Wholeness.
On the surface of this parshah, we see competition, deception, favoritism: Isaac and Rebecca do not seem to have been good parents, skilled and effective in raising two sons to be whole, complete.
It’s common to say that Esau, “a man of the fields,” symbolizes the outer field of life, the physical, while Jacob, “a quiet person, sitting in tents,” symbolizes the inner field of life, the spiritual.
Often people see a battle taking place between these two people and these two aspects of life, but life, to be Life, needs to have both physical and spiritual and they need to be integrated.
A great blessing came to me in understanding a step in how this integration takes place when I heard someone giving a quote from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental Mediation Program ®.
Maharishi commented that Ananda, Total Joy (in Hebrew: “Simchah”), is everyone’s birthright.
Looking at the story of Jacob asking Esau to sell him his birthright for some porridge he was making, it occurred to me that Jacob, symbolizing the Spiritual aspect of Life, was asking Esau, symbolizing the Physical aspect of Life, to end his famished state by surrendering his commitment to the Physical Alone, and opening himself to the spiritual porridge Jacob was cooking.
Porridge seems to have a bubbly quality to it and cooking it seems to me to be equivalent to revealing that Ananda/Joy/Unified Field/Sameach/Gd, has a texture: it is not just flat, it has a bubbly quality.
So rather than Jacob cheating Esau, acting cruelly, Jacob was actually enlivening the Joy in Esau, ending his famishment, by taking from him his false birthright in the Physical, and giving him his real birthright, in Ananda, Gd.
Similarly, when Toledot tells us that Esau, the man of the fields, was Isaac’s favorite we can see that Isaac was unable to integrate the spiritual with the physical and so he was not able to live with Wholeness, the integration of the spiritual and the material. We can see this very clearly when Toledot also tells us that Isaac became blind: what greater blindness than to be unaware of Wholeness.
For Rebecca to deceive Isaac by dressing Jacob so that he seemed like the hairy Esau might seem like favoritism on Rebecca’s part, but Esau had already sold his physical birthright to Jacob and so what Rebecca was doing was creating an integration of spirituality with materiality, an integration that would raise the generations to increasingly higher levels of integration.
Later in Torah we see a very high step in this integration and Restoration of Awareness to Jacob’s descendants when at Mt. Sinai, all of the nation of Israel hears Gd speak, something that I have not seen reported in any other scripture, amazingly enough.
Still, hearing Gd speak from a distance is an experience of the duality between Gd and humanity: Full Restoration of Awareness means going beyond this duality and experiencing the Oneness which is All.
Toledot reminds us that we need to live balanced, integrated lives, making sure that our material needs are nourished by our spiritual development so that we go beyond duality of any kind and experience duality and all multiplicity within the Oneness that is our real Nature: The All-in-All.
Reading, reciting, hearing, discussing Torah, the Siddur (prayerbook) and their supplements and commentaries and acting with their Wisdom is an excellent way to do this. Getting together with our community, with our World Family, is an excellent way to do this; both are excellent ways to increase our Joy and Wholeness by sharing, by integrating the multiplicity of life so that we experience the Wholeness with its details.
Let’s continue easily, gently, innocently doing this.
Baruch HaShem