Parashat VaEra 5786 – 01/17/2026
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.
Shemot 6:2-9:35
David M. Bader, the author of Haikus for Jews (“Is one Nobel Prize / Too much to ask from a child / After all I’ve done?”) has another volume, Haiku U. , which summarizes 100 of the Great Books in 17 syllables (ultimate Cliff’s Notes). For Aristotle’s Metaphysics he offers up:
Substance has essence.
Form adds whatness to thatness.
Whatsits have thinghood.
This is a cute piece of writing, but in reviewing the remainder of this chapter, I almost felt that it was a pretty accurate parody of the kind of demonstrations I was reading in Rambam.
Once Rambam has identified Gd with the Prime Mover, the unmoved, eternal, unbounded source of all change in the created universe, he goes on to flesh out our understanding of Gd.
And it is absurd that there should be two or more of them because it is absurd that there should be multiplicity in the separate things, which are not bodies, except when one of them is a cause and the other an effect, as has been mentioned in the sixteenth premise. It has also been made clear that this first cause does not fall under time because it is impossible that there should be movement with regard to it, as has been mentioned in the fifteenth premise.
So the first thing we derive about Gd is that Gd is unique. This makes good sense based on our experience of transcending. When we transcend in TM, the object of perception gets finer and finer until it goes away completely, leaving us in the state of Pure Consciousness. This state of Pure Consciousness has no boundaries – not in space, because there are no objects to break the symmetry of consciousness, and not in time, because there are no objects to move or change, and thereby mark time. Further, since Pure Consciousness has no specific content, if it were two, there would be no way to distinguish between the two instances of Pure Consciousness, since they would be two indistinguishable things occupying the same “space” in the transcendent.
Incidentally, there is a case in physics where two things can be absolutely identical to one another, and that is in the realm of elementary particles. Two electrons, for example, are absolutely indistinguishable from one another. There is no way, even theoretically, to distinguish them, other than the fact that they may be in different quantum states. In fact, two electrons cannot be in the same quantum state, but that is an accident and has nothing to do with their essence. The reason that electrons are indistinguishable is that they are not separate particles at all. They are excitations of one, underlying field, not little balls of charge or even point particles. If, instead of electrons, we take photons, they too are excitations of an underlying field (the electromagnetic field) and they can be in the same quantum state – think of a laser as many coherent photons, all in the same quantum state. So those photons cannot even be distinguished by quantum state. Elementary particles, even when we view them as excitations of a field, are still finite, so the comparison to the Prime Mover is not exact. There cannot be two Prime Movers.
Rambam goes on to show that Gd is necessarily existent, that is, for anything else to exist, Gd must of necessity exist, as Gd is the ultimate source of all existing things. The argument takes two pages and I won’t reproduce it here, but it goes something like this. We see that there are things that exist. We know that all of them cannot be subject to growth and decay, because then at some point everything would decay, and we see that this does not happen. Likewise, all of them cannot be exempt from growth and decay, because we see things that are not exempt – they grow and decay, like our own bodies. So therefore some existents are subject to growth and decay, while some are not.
An existent that is not subject to growth or decay is a necessary existent, that is, it must exist indefinitely, and it is not caused by anything outside itself. Rambam goes on to show, in a manner reminiscent of our haiku , that there can only be one necessary existent, which is necessary in regard to its essence, and this is another way of describing Gd. Further, this necessary existent is the cause of all other existents, and therefore must create from within itself. In other words, in the expression of the Sages, Gd is the Place of the world, the world is not the place of Gd . In the words of Vedic Science, consciousness is all that there is.
We will continue with this chapter next week, Gd willing.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Va’era
“Va’era” means “And he appeared.” Gd answers Moses’ complaint that Pharaoh has not listened to his message from Gd: let my people go. Gd tells Moses that He is appearing to Moses in Full Strength to deliver the promise He made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that He will make them a great nation.
Exodus 6:2
“Gd spoke to Moses and He said to him, “I Am the Lord.”
Exodus 6:31
I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob with [the Name] Almighty Gd but [with] My name YHWH, I did not become known to them.”
As “Elokim” Gd speaks to Moses. He tells him He is “YudKeWawKe”. He then tells Moses that he appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as “EL ShaDaI but as “YudKeWawKe” He did not become known by them (Rashi’s commentary).
Assuming this is so, we’ll tentatively look at YKWK as describing four different levels through which God, Totality, Appears within HimSelf, within Gd. These levels range from Maximum Abstraction to Maximum Concreteness – the four worlds of Kabbalah: Beriyah, Atzilut, Yetzirah and Asiyah; from this point of view Gd is telling Moses that He is giving him the whole range (manifest, at least) of existence and this should give Moses confidence that although Pharaoh and the Children of Israel have not listened to Moses so far, they WILL listen because now Gd is giving him Total Support so Moses should do as Gd commands – tell Pharoah to free Gd’s people.
There seems to be a hierarchy through which Gd is recognized by humans and it seems that neither Abraham, Isaac nor Jacob recognized the Full Wholeness within which the Hierarchy exists – they did not experience complete Oneness, despite Torah’s telling us that Abraham was “given every blessing”. Something seems to have been left out of their awareness but that seems to be given to Moses – at least, Gd is presenting Gd to Moses from all levels of Hierarchy, and from the Wholeness within which they are increasingly “manifest” expressions.
In the rest of the Parshah, Gd tells Moses that He will bring about 10 plagues through Moses and Aaron, hardening Pharaoh’s heart each time so that Pharaoh, who has denied God as One, will come to recognize that Gd is One, within whom all the Egyptian deities are but small expressions. These plagues occur and Pharaoh says He will let the Israelites go but Gd hardens his heart and he changes his mind.
We might look at the physiological symbolism of Gd, Moses, Pharoah, Egypt, Plagues and Promised Land from many angles. Dr. Tony Nader, whose books on Human Physiology and Ramayan in Human Physiology are familiar to many Beth Shalom congregants, presents a model which we might adapt to Torah for those people, places, things and events for which I have as yet found no Kabbalistic physiological representation.
For example, Gd would be the Total Physiology but also at every level of physiology He would be the Totality but especially the Central Governing Aspect, the central nervous system. Canaan, the Promised Land, would correspond to a healthy physiology; Egypt would correspond to a stressed physiology. Pharaoh particularly would correspond to a stressor of the whole physiology.
Also, the six levels of the cerebral cortex, the CEO of the physiology, might correspond to the six days of Creation, the twelve cranial nerves might correspond to the 12 tribes of the Children of Israel, the 24 chromosomes in the DNA might correspond to the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet plus the long and short vowels.
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg in his book “Body, Mind and Soul: Kabbalah on Human Physiology, Disease and Healing,” says that all disease results from a lack of gratitude. From this angle, the slavery in Egypt resulted from our ancestor’s losing the ability to be aware of Gd as the Source of All Goodness. The return to freedom results from returning to recognition of Gd as the Source of All and from increasingly living their lives with a desire to attune to Him in gratitude – not as a mood but as the natural reality which occurs as we respect others, are kind to them, grateful to them, and through our respect for them, respect Gd, Gd’s Kindness and are grateful to Gd. Our gratitude rises to the level where we “Love Gd with all our heart, all our soul, all our might.”
In present times and in any time, our return to freedom occurs the same way.
Torah study – listening, reciting, thinking about and acting in accord with – is a good tool to bring us into alignment with Gd and naturally to good health, good relations with others and to heal our planet and our world: physically, symbolically, spiritually.
Prayer can express our reverence and our gratitude, especially the prayers of our siddurs (prayer books) which generally do not ask Gd for help but praise Gd for His Qualities, beyond our ability to know intellectually as an Object of our awareness: He is only Known to Himself and only by rising to the Level of Oneness with Gd can we experience our individual human self as an Expression of Gd and thus bring Full Knowing into our awareness which has become Awareness.
I continue to be very encouraged with the great friendliness, love and joy that I experience in so many of our Fairfield residents and very strongly in our Beth Shalom Congregation. I am very confident that the spiritual exile, the illness of our planet, the enslavement in the restrictions of limited awareness, is ending and that we are participating in ending it and I am confident that many of us are coming very close to Gd and will return to Oneness, beyond the duality of Gd and creation – no plagues needed!
Baruch HaShem!