Parshiyyot Chukat-Balak 5786 – 06/27/2026
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.
Chukat: Bamidbar 19:1-22:1
Balak: Bamidbar 22:2-25:9
Rambam now begins to get into the question of creation in time more directly. He first talks about the way forms are created and applied to objects:
Accordingly the question remains why it has produced the thing at one particular moment and not before, as it itself was existent before. Now of necessity there can be no doubt that the impossibility that the act produced in time could come about before it was produced is due either to the absence of a certain relation between the agent and the object of the action – if the agent is a body – or to the absence of the requisite preparation of matter – if the agent is not a body. All these preliminary remarks are in accordance with what in natural speculation is established as an obligatory doctrine, without any attention being given at present to the question of the eternity of the world or its being produced in time. For that is not the subject of the present chapter.
I want to say a few things about the concept of time, from the point of view of modern physics, Jewish thought and Maharishi’s thought. Let me start with Maharishi. In his commentary to the Bhagavad-Gita, IV:1, he writes:
Time is a conception to measure eternity. Indian historians base their conception of time on eternal Being: for them eternity is the basic field of time.
Time exists only in the relative creation. We get our conception of time from motion and change, especially cyclical motion. For example, the earth goes around the sun, and this gives us our concept of a year. The earth spins on its axis and we have a day. In Pure Consciousness, where there are no objects, there is no motion or change, there is no time – it is eternal. Since Pure Consciousness is the deepest level of our existence, it means that in our essential nature, we are eternal. In fact, despite what the bumper stickers may say (“Where are you going to spend eternity?!), we are all living eternity, all the time.
We can get an idea of what eternity means from the cycles of time Maharishi lays out in a continuation of the above quote:
The eternity of the eternal life of absolute Being is conceived in terms of innumerable lives of the Divine Mother, a single one of whose lives encompasses a thousand lifespans of Lard Shiva. One life of Lord Shiva covers the time of a thousand lifespans of Lord Vishnu…
When you work this all out to about 1.5 x 10^25 years, which is many orders of magnitude longer than the life of the physical universe as predicted by General Relativity. The shortest cycle that Maharishi delineates is about 4.32 million years. So again, our conception of time comes from cyclical change, in this case cyclical changes in the universe as a whole. Whether or not each cycle is identical to the last one is an open question.
When Einstein introduced General Relativity, which describes gravity as curved space-time, some of the first solutions of the Einstein equations predicted that the universe began as an infinitely dense point, which began to expand at some point. We can say how long ago this was (based on our measurements of the amount of mass-energy in the universe and its distribution). One must bear in mind that this infinitely dense point, a “singularity” of space-time, from which the universe emerged, had space and time itself all balled up in it. It’s not like we have infinite space and time, and somewhere in that space and at one particular moment in time everything exploded outward. Rather space and time themselves, and all the different particles in that space and time, were all created together out of the singularity. This of course casts a whole new light on the issue of “creation in time.” It also leaves open the possibility of many creations, each with its own space and time, in some other dimension perhaps, but unreachable to us using any known physics. There is a hint of this in the famous Midrash that Gd created many creations before ours, none of which had the right balance of the Attribute of Mercy and the Attribute of Justice to survive.
Getting back to Rambam’s exposition:
Hence it is clear that the agent that produces a form – I mean to say its giver – must of necessity be a form, namely, one that is separate. Now it is absurd that any preference accorded by this agent, which is not a body, should be due to a certain relation. For it is not a body and accordingly cannot draw near or recede or have a body draw near to or recede from it, for there is no relation of distance between a body and that which is not a body. Accordingly the cause of the nonexistence of a particular action is the nonexistence of the preparation of that particular matter to receive the action of the separate agent. Accordingly it has become clear that the action of bodies upon one another, in respect of their forms, necessitates the preparation of the various kinds of matter with a view to the reception of the act of that which is not a body, these acts being the forms. Considering that the effects produced by the separate intellect are clear and manifest in that which exists – being everything that is produced anew, but does not result solely from the mixture of elements itself – it is necessarily known that this agent does not act either through immediate contact or at some particular distance, for it is not a body. Hence the action of the separate intellect is always designated as an overflow, being likened to a source of water that overflows in all directions and does not have one particular direction from which it draws while giving its bounty to others. For it springs forth from all directions and | constantly irrigates all the directions nearby and afar. Similarly the intellect in question may not be reached by a force coming from a certain direction and from a certain distance; nor does the force of that intellect reach that which is other than itself from one particular direction, at one particular distance, or at one particular time rather than another. For its action is constant as long as something has been prepared so that it is receptive of the permanently existing action, which has been interpreted as an overflow. Similarly with regard to the Creator, may His name be sublime; inasmuch as it had been demonstrated that He is not a body and had been established that the universe is an act of His and that He is its efficient cause-as we have explained and shall explain- – it has been said that the world derives from the overflow of Gd and that He has caused to overflow to it everything in it that is produced in time. In the same way it is said that He caused His knowledge to overflow to the prophets.
Since forms are not bodies – they are more abstract than bodies, which instantiate particular instances of forms – they appear to exist outside of time. Since they exist outside of time, the normal rules of causality do not apply. Rambam describes the way they act as an “overflow.” Now an overflow spreads out in all directions; when it encounters fertile ground it waters it and fructifies it. Where it encounters stony ground, nothing happens. In a similar way, there is an “overflow” from the forms, and where matter is prepared to receive that particular form, or in other words, to instantiate it, then the form takes hold of that matter; where there is no preparation, nothing happens. Whether this happens over a certain amount of time or not, I don’t know. It’s a bit hard for me to see how formless matter can get organized and structured into some form instantaneously, and that is probably not what Rambam means here. I think the idea of the theory here is to bridge the gap between the Timeless, Gd, and time-bound matter. It is like all the forms are everywhere, all the time, and it is only when some prepared matter picks up the form that it was prepared for, that this particular form gets instantiated in this matter. I think of this in terms of radio waves from many stations, all of which coexist at all points of space, but we only pick up on one station when we have a properly tuned antenna and receiver.
Last week we discussed the fact that modern physics blurs the line between form (forces) and matter (matter particles). The two are unified at the level of the Unified Field, and the creation of matter, in whatever form it comes, is due to the self-referral nature of the Unified Field. In fact, on the level of the Unified Field itself, there is no creation – just the field and the virtual dynamics within it. Time is part of creation, and therefore it is not clear what we mean by “creation in time.” I think this is one of those questions that are not answered, but disappear, once one perceives the Unified Field (of Consciousness) is the all-pervading Wholeness of life, and our questions about time are only valid in a state of consciousness where the Wholeness is obscured (or if we choose to operate on that level of consciousness so that we can relate to the objective world.
I hope to wrap up this discussion next week.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parshiyyot Chukat-Balak
Parashat Chukat
In Parashat Chukat, Miriam dies, the well that follows her dries up, the people complain, Gd tells Moses to take his rod, speak to a rock and water will come out of it, Moses instead strikes the rock and Gd denies him entrance to the Promised Land for his disobedience – there are different rabbinical theories about why Gd denies Moses entrance but Torah is very clear that Gd did deny Moses entrance.
Does that mean that Moses lost his chance for teshuvah, return to primordial Oneness?
Put it another way: when Moses is denied entry to the physical land of Canaan, Eretz Israel, does that mean he’s also denied entrance to the spiritual Promised Land, the land of fully developed awareness?
No, this Land he can enter. And, perhaps, since he has been a conduit for Gd to speak through him, he is already in this Land. He struck the rock because Gd guided him to strike the rock, even though Gd told him to speak to the rock.
Let us see what we can find in Torah and in this parshah that supports this view, not only for Moses but for every generation, including our own and all future generations.
1 – “Be Thou holy”:
Gd many times said, “Be thou Holy, for I Am Holy” (for example, Leviticus 11:44) and has given many directions that suggest how this can be done; for example, “Love the Lrd thy Gd with all thy heart, all thy might and all thy soul.” This Love is something Moses clearly has: even when he pleads with Gd to give forgiveness to wrongdoers, Moses is loving Gd with all his heart and soul, pleading for the life of people who are expressions of Gd, even though Gd is seeming to hide within them, even though they seem to be unaware that they are the Whole hidden in Its Expressions. “Loving Gd” is something that clearly doesn’t depend on entering the physical Promised Land.
2 – Gd earlier in Torah (Numbers 12:8) describes Moses as someone with whom Gd speaks mouth to mouth, clearly, not in riddles.
What will make the physical Promised Land a spiritual place will be the ease with which people can perceive Gd’s Presence in it: since Moses is already in Gd’s Presence (and serves as the physical body through whom Gd’s Voice speaks to the people) Moses is already living in the spiritual Promised Land even though he cannot enter the physical Promised Land.
3 – Going beyond duality.
Teshuvah, return to Oneness, requires going beyond the struggle between opposites; for example, requires seeing that Gd is within Egypt (“Mitzrayim,” restrictions), within the wilderness/desert (barrenness/Transcendent Fullness ) and within the Promised Land (“Canaan,” synchronicity, Wholeness with its details, freedom along with restrictions).
In serving Gd, anyone, not just Moses, can experience this Awareness that Gd is All-in-All, Wholeness containing duality and multiplicity.
4 – Perceiving Gd in All.
Experiencing that All is One requires perceiving Gd in All. When Gd denies Moses entrance into the physical Promised Land, He is forcing Moses to experience freedom within restrictions: to accept the restriction of not entering the physical Promised Land and to find freedom within that restriction. Gd is the Restrictor and the Restriction: The Restriction is Filled with Gd’s Presence. Gd is setting up the condition in which Gd as Gd begins to reveal Himself fully to Gd, playing the role of Moses; Gd begins to reveal Himself as Unlimited, and His Moses role begins no longer to be lost in weeping over loss, exulting over gain, but begins to perceive himself as the Wholeness that flows in Streams of Loss and Gain, of Weeping and Exulting.
The same thing happens to us: Gd hides within each of us, playing the role of the limited people that we are and Gd may sometimes give us restrictions that force our limited self to surrender, open to Gd within our self, as Gdalways Gd, always Whole, always One – begins to soften the limits and to reveal that we are what we always are: One!
This Revelation becomes clearer, deeper, longer lasting, through our innocent desire and actions to serve Gd, to do God’s Will, as we know it from family traditions, religious traditions, spiritual practices, Torah on the surface, Torah in the Transcendent and our intuition.
Parashat Balak
In this parshah, we are reminded that Gd is always Protecting us, Blessing us: by doing our best to follow Gd’s Will, this Protection and Blessing becomes clearer and more livable in our daily life. Balaam, though requested by Balak, king of Moab, to curse Israel could only speak what Gd gave him to speak and that was blessings for Israel. Although Balaam was forced to give a blessing, he would have been happier to curse and tried to find ways to do so.
From our side we can be armored in purity and receive and give only Blessings by behaving like Moses who served Gd with all his heart and soul in leading Israel to high spiritual consciousness and to the physical Promised Land,
Or we can behave like Balaam, always holding something back so we can make a personal profit if at all possible. According to Jewish legend, Balaam was made a prophet so that the non-Jewish nations could not say, “If we only had our own prophet, like Moses, we could also have served Gd.”
From another view, Gd played the role of Balaam in order to have the fun of playing a high role with selfish aspects, then removing the prophet status so Gd could have the fun of living as a person who had to find a way to live with substantially diminished perception and skill.
Balaam lost his status as a prophet after his advice to Balak to set up the conditions of harlotry and idolatry that would tempt a people too weak to resist – despite the blessing they had so recently received.
This parshah shows us that we need to be alert:
We really need to be following the straight path and we cannot forget that our good life is a gift from Gd for being good people; we cannot sharply depart from the Path of Virtue. Hardly a moment after Gd blessed Israel through words he put into the prophet Balaam’s mouth, the people are sinning with harlots from Midian and worshiping their gods – abandoning Wholeness for partiality.
Key in the blessings of this parshah are the words, “Ma Tovu ohalecha Yaakov mishkanotecha Yisroel”: “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, thy dwelling places, O Israel.” This is the prayer we recite when we enter the synagogue. And these words Gd put into Balaam’s mouth instead of the curse that Balak, king of Moab, wanted Balaam to speak
Balak means “Destroyer”; Balak, the king of Moab, sends messengers asking Balaam (his name means “no nation”, he does not serve a nation, a whole: he is a prophet that can be hired by individuals to bless or curse) to curse Israel as they pass through Moab.
Balaam replies that he can only speak what Gd puts in his mouth to speak and try though Balak does and try though Balaam does, Gd puts only a blessing for Israel in Balaam’s mouth.
This is the comforting side of this parshah: The warning side is the sinning with harlots and worshiping their idols, actions which result in a plague and Moses ordering each of the judges in the community to slay two wrong-doers to stop the plague.
The parshah ends with Pinchas, grandson of Aaron, slaying an Israeli prince along with the harlot he took into his tent in full view of the community.
Though today we can certainly not take up a sword and slay a wrongdoer to end plagues and immorality in our community, in the world, we can do our best to live good, pure lives so that our community, our world, is blessed by Gd flowing through us and everyone feels comforted by this Blessing.
Our congregation can and is creating a world in which Gd’s Presence is becoming more visible (perhaps not in the mainstream news) but in everyday life and setting up the conditions so, as Rabbi Tuvia Bolton likes to say when ending his commentary on the weekly parshah:
“Moshiach Now!”
Baruch HaShem