Parashat Vayeshev 5785 – 12/21/2024
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 37:1-40:23
Last week we discussed the first two of the three reasons Rambam gave for the proliferation of incorrect knowledge about Gd: (a) the long passage of time and (b) the domination by foreign powers. The third factor Rambam considers is:
… and because, as we have made clear [chapter 34], it is not permitted to divulge these matters to all people. For the only thing it is permitted to divulge to all people are the texts of the books. You already know that even the legalistic science of law was not put down in writing in the olden times because of the precept, which is widely known in the nation: Words that I have communicated to you orally, you are not allowed to put down in writing.
If we were worried about the transmission of knowledge, it would seem that one would want to teach it as broadly as possible, but that seems not to be the case in Rambam’s writing. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. First, there is a logistical problem. Until fairly recently, most of Jewish society was rural and agrarian. That means the people were spread out and communication was a problem. Teaching the masses was generally impracticable. In the months before Pesach and Rosh haShanah there were gatherings (“yarchei kallah”) where the Sages would lecture, but these lectures focused on the halachot of the upcoming holidays, and didn’t delve into the deeper “mysteries of the Torah.”
A second reason that this knowledge was not widely taught is that it was held to be dangerous, both for the student and the society. Plumbing the deeper, more powerful levels of reality can be dangerous if a person’s nervous system is not ready for it. The deeper we go, the greater the energy, and if there is some stress or impediments in the nervous system this energy cannot flow freely. The turbulence created can severely damage the person who is “playing with matches” both physically and psychologically. The story of “the four who entered Paradise” is served up as an object lesson.
More seriously, there can be danger to society, and even to the world. Those who study the “mysteries of Torah” may also learn what is often called “practical Kabbalah,” which is practices that have effects on the physical world. This can be something as simple as writing amulets for health, or it can be something as complex as trying to influence the outcome of a war. Now if someone gets really good at practical Kabbalah, but their consciousness, and therefore their intentions, are not pure, his actions may create more harm than good. And since these actions are presumably from a deep level that we are able to access, the harm may be significant.
For all these reasons, the deepest knowledge of Torah was kept under wraps except under very stringent circumstances, and indeed is not taught in detail – according to the Gemara “only the Chapter headings” may be taught, and that only to mature scholars with family responsibilities – presumably people who are emotionally stable, pious and sober – in other words, someone whose surface-level activities produces only good effects.
All these reasons to hide the knowledge of the deepest understanding may have been perfectly reasonable from the time of Moshe Rabbeinu on, but the upshot of this policy has been the loss of the benefits of this deeper knowledge. If I may engage in some speculation here, I will go out on a limb and say that part of the knowledge Moshe received on Mt. Sinai was a technique, or series of techniques, that allowed people to transcend and experience directly closeness to Gd. Unfortunately, as we’ve all experienced with the TM program, this kind of evolution takes time. It is possible that 3300 years ago people were less stressed than we are now, although after 210 years of slavery one would think that the Jewish people would have had plenty of stress to deal with.
In any event, we know that 40 days after Mt. Sinai, the people are making a golden calf and having themselves an orgy around it. Everyone asks how it could be that the entire nation was on this spiritual peak and only a short time later they fall so low. I think the answer is obvious – the people had no technique to stabilize the spiritual high that they had received. The revelation was something that had come to the people from outside themselves; it was not something that they had “earned” by practice of whatever techniques they had (since Moshe hadn’t come down from Mt. Sinai, they might not yet have had any technique at all). If the experience of the transcendent is not stabilized in the awareness, then our action will be based on partial perception and incomplete or incorrect thinking, and we wind up making golden calves.
The rest of the Biblical narrative, through the prophets and the narrative parts of the writings, and much of post-Biblical Jewish history is an alternation between periods of inspiration and backsliding, reward and punishment, with the emphasis on punishment, always because the people were no longer able to access their own transcendent Self. The prophets continually exhort the people to repent, to follow the strictures of Torah, seemingly to no avail. The implication is always that the people are too stubborn to mend their ways. More charitably, some suggest that the allure of the physical world, the here and now, the immediate gratification, is too strong to compete with the hidden, abstract spiritual bliss of the transcendent, even though that spiritual bliss is infinite and way beyond anything that this world can offer. As the line from the famous movie goes, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above.”
I would like to offer a third possibility, one which is particularly applicable to our times. I suggest that the people didn’t repent (“teshuva” = return – to the transcendent) because they didn’t know how. The techniques for expanding consciousness were lost, because they were only being taught to an elite few sages/teachers. The people were violating the first message of the prophets: Know Gd. We are not asked primarily to have faith in Gd, nor to obey Gd, but to know Gd. Once we know Gd, all the other stuff falls into place. As the Upanishads tell us, “Know That by which all things are known.”
We can only obey Gd’s Will if our own will has risen to the status of Gd’s Will, as it says in Pirke Avot [2:4] “Make His (Gd’s) Will like your will, so that He will make your will like His Will. Nullify your will before His Will, so that He will nullify the will of others before your will.” This nullification of our individual will in the face of the cosmic Will, which is the essence of obeying Gd, is a state of consciousness, not a mood we can force ourselves to have, nor an idea we can pretend is our spiritual level. It must be developed and there are techniques to develop it.
The trouble is that these techniques were no longer widely available, due to the reasons Rambam has been discussing. How can we expect people to act with broad awareness if they don’t have broad awareness and have no obvious way to achieve it? More to the point, why do the prophets rail against the people’s sinfulness and promise (and deliver) terrible punishments when the people’s actions fall short of the mark? Give the people knowledge and time for that knowledge to take effect.
Gd willing we will continue with Rambam’s analysis next week.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Vayeishev
This parshah begins with telling us that “Jacob dwelt in the land of his father’s sojourning, the land of Canaan.” “Canaan” seems to derive from the Hebrew “kana,” to bring into synchronicity.
It seems that “dwelt” is more stable than “sojurnings” and we can get a sense that the difficulties that Jacob experienced with his uncle Laban and his brother Esau are now over and he is living peacefully in a land where all the parts work synchronistically, harmoniously.
And yet this peace and harmony are upset when Jacob gives preferential treatment to his son Joseph and more deeply when Joseph angers his brothers by telling them and his father two dreams that seem to indicate he will dominate them.
Despite this break, Gd’s hand is in this as Joseph tells his brothers when his ability to dream and to interpret dreams have led him to become de facto ruler of Egypt (Mitzraim: restrictions) and a famine has forced his brothers and father to leave Canaan, the land of harmony, to obtain food from Egypt, the land of restrictions. Canaan may be both a real land and a symbolic land: the famine may be a famine in the perception of Jacob and his sons that caused them to lose sight of the full harmony of the land. To restore their perception to wholeness, Gd arranges for the brothers to sell Joseph into slavery so that Joseph’s ability to dream prophetically arranges for him to become virtual ruler of Egypt and for Egypt to store up food during the seven full years that he predicted will be followed by seven years of famine.
One way to look at this is that when our perception of harmony is of limited scope, our perception of harmony can be easily broken by misbehavior and then we find ourselves not dwelling, but sojourning, in a land of famine, forced to leave it to struggle for food, material and spiritual, in a land of restrictions, a superficial world that nonetheless allows us to survive, even though not in the harmony we had previously enjoyed.
A message that I draw for myself and for our world is that it is very important that we always act open-heartedly, place Gd/Oneness first, treat everyone fairly, with love, and thus extend the range of harmony we perceive and enjoy and the range within which we do not mind so we perceive Gd’s Hand in all events and fully forgive the seeming offenses of others.
Most importantly, we need to do our best to innocently remind ourselves from time to time that Gd’s Plan may not be clear to our vision and so we need to do our best to be open to whatever comes, to somehow gracefully adapt. Then we extend the range of Canaan, of harmony, to include the realm of Egypt/Mitzraim, restrictions and harmony prevails – Jacob in our souls is “Israel” “one who prevails over Gd,” embraces Gd (really, it is Gd within Jacob who prevails over Gd during this stage of Gd’s revealing to Jacob, Jacob’s true Nature – Pure Oneness).
With Pure hearts our souls and our world return to awareness of the Oneness that Is Always All There Is.
Today! Let this happen today for everyone, all souls, today and let it last unendingly!
Baruch HaShem.