Shavuot 5786 – 05/23/2026
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.
Rambam gives an example of Occam’s Razor:
In accordance with this purpose and in view of the fact that we have apprehended that the motions of all the fixed stars constitute one immutable motion in which the relative positions of these stars do not change, we are confident that all of them are situated in one sphere. Now it is not impossible that every fixed star is situated in a sphere of its own, while the motions of these stars are one and the same- all of these spheres being situated on the same poles. In that case the number of the intellects would be equal to that of the stars, as is said: Is there any number of His armies? [Job 25:3] – he [RAR: i.e. the Biblical author] means because of their multiplicity. For the intellects, the heavenly bodies, and all forces are all together His armies. However, there is no doubt that their species may be numbered.
The “fixed stars” are those stars which all rotate together around the earth’s axis while maintaining the same relationship to one another during this rotation. They are “fixed” in the sense that we cannot detect any movement besides the rotation around the earth’s axis. In modern terms of course the stars are not embedded in a sphere – they are distributed throughout three-dimensional space, at truly astronomical (duh!) distances from earth. Now given what astronomers in the 12th century could actually see, the stars are indeed “fixed” – maintaining the same relationship to one another from hour to hour and from night to night. Rambam points out that one could posit a sphere for each star, with all the spheres moving in lock step, or one could posit that all the stars are in one sphere, and that sphere rotates, taking all the fixed stars with it. Obviously, the latter explanation is much simpler and requires.
According to modern astronomy, the closest star to earth is Alpha Centauri, which is about 4.37 light-years from earth. At this distance, the star would have to move 200 million km in a direction perpendicular to the line between the earth and the star, in order for us to see move of 1 second of arc. We can see this kind of motion with instruments, but it’s doubtful that medieval astronomers could. In addition, it would take a substantial amount of time for the star to move 200,000,000 km. Even if the star moves at the speed of light, it would take 10 minutes to move that 1 second of arc. This is not a motion that would be detectible by the human eye. One would need to take two photographs and compare them (probably digitally) to highlight the change in position, and of course this technology wasn’t available. This motion of a star with respect to the other, “fixed” stars, is called “proper motion.” This distinguishes it from the motion of rotation of the sphere of the fixed stars / rotation of the earth in space.
The modern view is clearly very different from the medieval view. Is it simpler? On the surface, it appears to be more complex; rather than a simple sphere undergoing constant circular motion, we have stars – large globs of glowing gasses flying in all different directions. The great advantage of the modern system over the Ptolemaic system is that it is a more accurate description of reality. For example, there are stars whose “proper motion” is in fact observable with the appropriate instruments. The Ptolemaic system cannot account for this in a natural way. The modern system doesn’t place arbitrary restrictions on the kind of motion the stars can have, and in fact provides a natural way to understand the evolution of stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the large-scale structure of the universe as a whole.
I hasten to admit that modern astrophysics has quite a number of unanswered questions, but the point is that a few simple principles can pretty much explain the expanded universe; its structure and evolution. The simplicity has moved, as it were, from the structure itself to the laws of nature that create that structure.
And just to finish the whole Occam’s Razor discussion, we mentioned last week that this drive towards simplicity seems to be inherent in the human mind, as we experience in TM. But there is another angle on simplicity, and that is that Pure Consciousness itself is completely simple. It is unified, without parts, ultimately simplicity. The simpler the system, the more it reflects the complete simplicity that lies at the source of all systems. This is true subjectively, in our awareness, and it is true objectively as well, in terms of the mathematical and cognitive maps we make of the external world.
I wish everyone a Chag Same’ach!
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Shavuot 5786
“Shavuot” means “weeks”. In Torah, it is called the “Feast of Weeks,” “the Feast pf Reaping” and the ‘Day of First Fruits” marking the wheat harvest. In rabbinic tradition, it marks the day on which Torah was Given – Basic Details of Gd. It also marks the 50th day from the second day of Passover, the day after seven weeks of “Counting the Omer” have passed. “Omer” means “sheaves: and sheaves were offered each day for these seven weeks.
One way to look at the meaning of weeks for our evolution is that Torah tells us Gd Created (Revealed) the Details of Gd in six days and on the seventh, Gd Rested – Lived as the Wholeness Gd always Is.
In our lives, we can look at a week as six days in which we attend to details; and on the seventh, we integrate the details into Wholeness, into Joy, into Love, to the extent our evolution enables us to experience. After seven weeks, we have made quite a bit of progress in attending and integrating detail. On the fiftieth, we go an extra step. It as if we have an experience that goes beyond time and into the Timeless, the Eternal.
We are then in a good position to reap the fruits of our actions and to offer the first fruits to Gd, to the extent we experience Gd and to the service of humanity, to the extent our hearts are open to Universal Love.
“Torah” is commonly translated as “Law”. We can understand “Law” as the Open Path to Restoration of our awareness to Wholeness.
Shavuot also means “oaths”; on Shavuot, we vowed our loyalty to Gd and Gd vowed Loyalty to us.
As we gather this Shavuot we have a lot to celebrate,
Baruch HaShem
(Please notice that I view “Law” as a path).
Chag Sameach,
Steve