Parashat Vayera 5786 – 11/08/2025
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 18:1-22:24
Rambam turns his attention to the proofs adduced for the existence of unity (i.e. Gd).
I shall explain to you likewise in this chapter the proofs of the belief in unity according to the opinion of the Mutakallimūn. They say that that which is indicated by what exists as being its maker and its bringer into existence is one. Their principal methods in establishing oneness are two: the method referring to reciprocal hindering, and the method of differing from one another.
Rambam actually goes on to elucidate 5 methods, falling into these two categories. In general, these are proofs by contradiction. We assume that there is no unity, e.g. there are two (or more) creators, and show that this leads to a logical contradiction.
The first method: This is called the method of “reciprocal hindering.” Any object can only have one of any pair of contrary accidents (e.g. it can be moving or at rest, but not both – this is pre-Einstein remember). If there were two gods, one might wish the object to be in motion and the other that it be at rest. But having both is impossible, therefore there must be only one god. I might add that if one were to argue that the two gods always had the same desire, then since they would have to have the same desire for every little bit of creation, it is hard to see how they would even be two, and not one.
Rambam gives a further example. Suppose there were a god who controls the earthly realm and another in control of the heavenly spheres. Each one would be in his own domain, and, according to Rambam, it would not be considered an incapacity in either one that they were incapable of influencing the other’s domain. He sees this as a weakness of the first method. From the point of view of modern physics, where there is no separation between earth and heaven (i.e. space), the argument doesn’t hold any water. I’m not sure that it holds water even under medieval assumptions, because if there is a whole domain of activity that is beyond the purview of either of the gods, they can hardly be called Gd.
The second method: This is similar to the first. If there were 2 gods, there would have to be some notion that applied to one and not to the other, in order to distinguish them. For example, there might be one good god and one evil god (similar to Zoroastrian belief). This does not lead to a logical contradiction if one assumes that these “notions” are separate from the gods’ essences, but as we have seen, according to Rambam, Gd’s knowledge, for example, is identical with His essence, as are His other attributes. That is because Gd is all-encompassing and there is nothing outside of Gd. All of the differences that we perceive are just the virtual, internal dynamics within Gd’s essence. Therefore, there can be nothing separate from Gd’s essence. Rambam promises more details on this method of proof later in his treatise.
The third method: This method is based on the idea that Gd’s Will is a will “that is not something superadded to the essence of the creator, but is a will that does not subsist in a substratum.” Such a will cannot belong to two beings. I think the argument would go that any being whose will and whose essence are identical would have to be infinite and eternal, and there can only be one such being, namely Gd. Rambam, however, doesn’t feel that the use of this idea by the Mutakallimūn is particularly well-understood, or well-developed.
The fourth method: “They say, the existence of an act necessarily indicates an agent and does not indicate to us a number of agents.” In other words, this is not actually a proof of unity, as there could be many agents, not just one. “…he would complete his demonstration by saying: there is no possibility in respect of the being of Gd, for it is necessary.” That is, everything depends on Gd, and Gd depends on nothing. Rambam goes on to show that this is no proof at all – in fact, it seems to me to beg the question, by assuming the existence of Gd in the first place.
The fifth method: This argument goes as follows. “If one [RAR: agent?] is sufficient for making the beings, a second one is superfluous and not required. If, however, being cannot be perfected and brought into orderly arrangement except by the two of them in conjunction, then incapacity is attached to each of them, as each of them needs the other and is in consequence not self-sufficient.” The implicit assumption seems to be that Gd must be self-sufficient, and there cannot be two self-sufficient entities in the universe. Certainly, anything that is created is not self-sufficient, as its existence depends on its creator. If there were two self-sufficient entities, they would both be transcendental to creation, unbounded in space and time. But, as I have argued above, this would effectively make them indistinguishable one from the other, and there would be no reason to call them two separate things.
Rambam does not like this argument, asserting that the inability to do something that is essentially unsuited to the actor (e.g. swimming across the Pacific Ocean or moving a 10-ton boulder) should not be considered an incapacity or defect. This makes sense to me when applied to created things; not so much with respect to Gd. We have already discussed some time ago the issue of logical contradictions (“irresistible force meets immovable object”) and how this does not indicate any lack in Gd, but this is not the same argument that will allow us to countenance multiple gods.
Rambam sums up his attitude to these proofs:
One of [the Mutakallimūn] was so wearied by those tricks that he affirmed that the belief in unity was accepted in virtue of the Law. The Mutakallimūn considered this statement as very disgraceful and despised him who made it. As for me, I am of the opinion that he among them who had made this statement was a man of a most rightly directed mind, averse to the acceptance of sophistries. … Accordingly the necessary consequences was that we failed to demonstrate what can be demonstrated. No complaint can be made except to Gd and to the equitable among men of intellect.
In other words, there doesn’t seem to be an acceptable proof of the unity of Gd. We do have Torah however, which testifies that in fact, Hashem is One, as we assert twice daily in our prayers. According to Maharishi, recourse to Scripture is a valid means of gaining knowledge – it is true testimony of people who have experienced the reality of which Scripture speaks, which is Gd’s existence and unity. An even more profound way of gaining this knowledge is to use the technology of consciousness we have available so we can rise to Unity Consciousness and experience that Unity both within and outside ourselves, as one all-pervading Unity, encompassing both subjective and objective aspects of life.