Parashat Vayishlach 5786 – 12/06/2025
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 32:4-36:43
In loving memory of Marie Smallow, whose 11 th Yahrzeit is tomorrow, December 7 / 17 Kislev
The list of premises continues:
15. Time is an accident consequent upon motion and is necessarily attached to it. Neither of them exists without the other. Motion does not exist except in time, and time cannot be conceived by the intellect except together with motion. And all that with regard to which no motion can be found, does not fall under time. We have discussed this connection a bit last week, where we stated that our conception of time comes from the motion or change of bodies. This is enshrined in the idea that the velocity is the rate of change of position with time: v = dx / dt in the mathematical notation. We gave examples, such as the revolution of the earth around the sun, which gives us our conception of a year, etc. Note that we can expand the idea of motion to include any kind of change, not just change in position. For example, a seed germinates in place, an insect pupates in place, etc. without any obvious motion. However, as Rambam points out elsewhere, change in a system will inevitably involve some kind of motion on the part of its parts.
Corresponding to this connection between time and motion / change, is the fact that anything that has no motion or change is eternal. This is almost tautological – if something never changes, then it is always the same. It can have no beginning nor end, because those are examples of change. This is the state we experience when we transcend thought in the TM technique and experience Pure Consciousness. Since there are no objects / bodies in this state, there is no chance of motion, and it is therefore beyond time – eternal.
16. In whatsoever is not a body, multiplicity cannot be cognized by the intellect, unless the thing in question is a force in a body, for then the multiplicity of the individual forces would subsist in virtue of the multiplicity of the matters or substances in which these forces are to be found. Hence no multiplicity at all can be cognized by the intellect in the separate things, which are neither a body nor a force in a body, except when they are causes and effects.
I am not sure at this point what Rambam is referring to by something that is “not a body.” Clearly, Gd is not a body, so that is a start for understanding (although it is the end point of Rambam’s logical development). Jewish tradition appears to be of two minds about the soul. It certainly survives death of the physical body, but it appears to be a created entity. It may be eternal on one end, but created at the beginning. Also, according to Jewish tradition, there is a storehouse of souls, called the guf (lit. “body”), which contains souls yet to incarnate, and it is only when the guf is emptied that the Messianic Age will begin. On the other hand, Rambam has described the soul as the “force in the body” which animates it, and when it leaves the body, the body is dead.
Finally, are angels “bodies”? Again, Jewish tradition isn’t completely clear on what an angel is. The Hebrew word for “angel” is mal’ach and means “messenger.” In the beginning of our parashah Ya’akov is said to have sent mal’achim, and Rashi comments, actual angels, because it is not clear from the text if human or divine messengers are meant. Mostly mal’achim are laws of nature “sent” by Gd to accomplish a particular task in the world, be it ordering a blade of grass to grow, or bringing a disaster on Sodom and Gemora. (Incidentally, I think a better translation of the Sanskrit devata would be “angel,” according to Maharishi’s understanding that the devatas are laws of nature.) Angels are certainly not physical bodies, but they are apparently finite in time, and perhaps in space as well. Maybe they are subtle bodies. Rambam will return to these issues as we get into the second part of the treatise.
17. Everything that is in motion has of necessity a mover; and the mover either may be outside the moved object, as in the case of a stone moved by a hand, or the mover may be in the body in motion, as in the case of the body of a living being, for the latter is composed of a mover and of that which is moved. It is for this reason that when a living being dies and the mover – namely the soul – is lacking from it, that which I moved – namely the organic body – remains at the moment in its former state, except that it’s not moved with that motion. However, inasmuch as the mover that exists in that which is moved is hidden and does not appear to the senses, it is thought of living beings that they are in motion without having a mover. Everything moved that has a mover within itself is said to be moved by itself – the meaning being that the force moving that which, in the object moved, is moving according to essence, exists in the whole of that object.
This principle is more or less a restatement of causation, but restricted to the sphere of movement. In particular, Rambam shows that the idea of a mover, or a force that causes motion, has both grosser and subtler levels. The hand moving the rock is a gross level – physical, matter moving other physical matter. The soul moving the body is an example of a non-physical mover causing a physical body to move. This would be any animal – animals have a kind of soul that animates it; humans differ in that we also have a rational soul and a Divine soul, which can override the instructions of the animal soul. As Katherine Hepburn put it (African Queen, 1951), “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
The whole universe, of course is in motion – in modern physics and in medieval thought as well. In the latter, the concentric spheres of the sublunary world and the heavens are in constant, circular motion, as we have already seen. But what moves the universe? Aristotle called this force the Prime Mover; Rambam will call it Gd. In Vedic Science we see all change and motion as the virtual activity within Pure Consciousness. The Mover and the Moved are actually one, and motion is what we see when we look at the universe with partial vision.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Vayishlach
http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/3481593/jewish/Vayishlach-Audio-Recording.htm
I felt great joy in listening to Rabbi Michoel Slavin recite this parshah and I felt he was feeling similar joy.
Joy is a sign to me of teshuvah, return to the One Who is all Joy, all Love, Total Balance, Total Integration.
There are two major events in this parshah, each one showing a type of integration of stillness and activity, of partiality and totality.
First, Jacob wrestles with a man who then seems to be an angel and perhaps is Gd, although many commentators consider the wrestling a wrestling within himself to overcome his fears, his lower human self and to rise to the level where he acts from a higher level of his personality, one that is more heavenly, more divine, more Gdly.
When Jacob wrestles with someone in the night, the Hebrew says: Genesis, XXXII, 25, that it was a man, but in Genesis XXXII, 29, the man says, (Soncino Press, Pentateuch, Rabbi Hertz translation), “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but ‘Israel”; for thou hast striven with Gd and with men, and hast prevailed.” From this, we get the higher sense: the man is in some way a representative of Gd, perhaps Gd Himself.
Personally, I feel the important point here is that we can overcome our inertia, our lower self and rise to Teshuvah, return to Oneness, Totality. However far Jacob rose in this event, commentators differ and we can differ but the event is an expression within Torah and therefore within Gd so reading it can enliven greater ability within us to live and act as Totality, not merely as an impulse of Totality.
Jacob says of this experience “I have seen Gd face-to-face and lived” though there are those who translate as “I have seen an angel of Gd face-to-face and lived”.
Jacob names the place “Peniel”: Face of God. “Panim” means “face” and “El” means “Gd.” So, Jacob felt he wrestled with Gd, not just a man, or an angel. “Wrestling” we can interpret as “clinging,” so first Gd clings to Jacob, then Jacob clings to Gd.
This is encouraging, that however lost we feel, Gd may at any time cling to us and draw us to him, and we can cling to Him, to Totality, and go beyond loss, con-fusion, fear and return to Total Awareness, Love, Joy, Confidence, Nothing left out.
Intriguingly, by clinging to Jacob, Gd causes Jacob, the “quiet man who sits in tents,” to strive, to becomes an active man, “one who strives with Gd and with men,” to become like his brother Esau, a man of the fields – although perhaps at a much higher level of activity since we do not see anything in Torah that speaks about Gd speaking or clinging to Esau.
Second, when Esau and Jacob finally meet, Jacob prostrates before Esau seven times and Esau embraces him and kisses him wholeheartedly: they part on good terms. As with everything in life, and seemingly Torah too, there are those who say Esau’s kiss was not wholehearted but the succeeding conversation in which they speak to each other as loving brothers seems to support the wholehearted view.
In these two events we see integration of the opposites that Jacob and Esau are often treated as representing (although these interpretations avoid the much they have in common, as all humans must):
Jacob, representing silence, in the direction of “Be still and know that I am Gd” (Psalm 46) and Esau symbolizing striving as in a different translation of this phrase: “Cease striving and know that I am Gd.” Yet the silence bows down to the activity and the activity embraces the silence and we have two brothers, one family.
So can we all do by letting our silence bow to our activity through prayer and other good actions and letting our actions embrace our silence by pausing routinely from action to let our activity settle into silence – and eventually find that the two are one, active silence, silent activity.
Baruch HaShem