Judaism and the Mystical Christ, Ch. 9: Let There Be Light

Note: This is part of an ongoing series entitled "Judaism and the Mystical Christ".  I have created a blog entry containing the table of contents linking to each article which may be accessed here:
 
Table of Contents

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A Ball on a Moving Train
We've been discussing a mystical understanding of the Creation narratives of Genesis, and I have been delving into various details about those narratives.  In the last post, I mentioned that an old scientific paradigm - which might be termed "Newtonian Physics" - is actually outdated, and that new scientific information challenges this paradigm.  I also alluded to the possibility that the new scientific paradigm may offer support to the mystical view of God that I have been discussing in this series.  I'd like to discuss this science by starting with a meditation on the first command of creation found in Gen. 1:3: "let there be light."

Instinctually, human beings tend to think of space and time as separate things.  We also tend to think that time is a constant - it doesn't slow down or speed up.  But these ideas began to be seriously challenged when one of the most brilliant (and possibly most well known ever) scientists in history entered the scene: Albert Einstein. 

In 1905 (called Einstein's "year of miracles"), Einstein provided one of the foundations for modern physics, and Quantum Mechanics in particular, when he challenged the popular conception of light as a wave by publishing a paper introducing a particle theory of light.  In the same year he published a paper on Special Relativity, which was later combined with General Relativity to become the Theory of Relativity.

In his paper on Special Relativity, Einstein pointed out a problem between Newton's theories and James Maxwell's equations defining the speed of light as a constant.  A popular way of describing the problem Einstein outlined is the analogy of a train.  Imagine that you are observing a person on a stationary train, and this person throws a ball at the wall on the other side of the train.  You are able to measure the speed of the ball when it is thrown in this scenario based on when the ball arrives at the other side of the train.  This measurement is complicated, however, when the train begins to move - as now, the speed of the ball calculated by the time it takes for the ball to reach the other side of the train must be added to the speed of the train.  This faster speed is how you would observe the speed of the ball.  If there were another observer standing on the train and measuring the speed of the ball, however, they would measure it as the speed when the train was stationary.  You will have produced a different numerical speed in your measurement than the observer on the train - but both are correct, given the frame of reference. 

Now if we replace the ball that is thrown with light, however, everything is thrown off.  If the person on the train were shining a light at the other side of the train, rather than throwing the ball, you (measuring the speed of light as the train passed by) and the other observer (standing on the train) would measure the speed of light with the exact same value.  Thus, the speed of light is outside of the laws of "normal physics" in a sense.

Another way to illustrate special relativity.

This is a great illustration for Special Relativity in a nutshell.  Special Relativity contains two postulates: 1) the speed of light does not vary, and 2) the laws of physics are the same wherever you are (whether you are on the moving train or the road next to it).  Putting these two postulates together causes complications - in order to keep the speed of light constant for all observers (as in the train analogy), space and time become variable.

According to Einstein's theories on relativity, when you approach the speed of light, time slows and measurements shorten - if it were possible for us to travel at the speed of light itself, we would experience no time nor movement at this speed.  If we were to take a trip at the speed of light, when we returned, we'd find that everyone else had aged considerably while we did not.

Unfortunately, it seems that it is nearly impossible (without taking advantage of certain loopholes which I will not go into) to travel at the speed of light.  This is because of that fact that as normal matter reaches higher speeds, its mass increases exponentially - which means that any amount of matter would take an infinite amount of energy to travel at the speed of light.  But light has no mass.  So light is outside the laws of physics and yet the laws of physics seem to build off of the law of light.

Interestingly enough, other experiments have shown that time changes as well - in October of 1971, Joseph C. Hafele and Richard E. Keating put four atomic clocks on board commercial airliners. They flew twice around the world, first eastward, then westward, and afterwards compared the clocks against others that remained at the United States Naval Observatory. Afterwards, the clocks from the planes disagreed with the clocks on the ground.  This experiment - known as the Hafele–Keating experiment, showed that the experience of time itself changed based on the speed one was traveling.

All of this is further complicated by the arrival of Quantum Mechanics - but I'm getting ahead of myself, as I'd like to make a quick pit stop to meditate on the first act of creation in Gen. 1:3.

Let There Be Light!
Personally, in light of the fact that light itself seems to be outside of the laws of physics in a way that makes it foundational to the way our universe works, I find it interesting that the first act of creation in Gen. 1:3 is "let there be light."  But light is more than just the first act of creation in the Bible - it is a recurring theme symbolizing movement to a higher consciousness.

The Hebrew for "let there be light" in this verse actually reads: "let there be light, and let there be light" - a repetition.  The mystical Jewish interpretation offers that the light is not a physical light, but awareness, and the repetition reveals that God is giving awareness to the side of goodness and darkness as well. 

The opening lines of the gospel of John allude to Genesis 1 with the phrase from John 1:1: "in the beginning was the Logos."  The writer of this gospel goes on to describe this Logos as a being - a "he" - whom has been since the beginning with God, and all things came from this being.  Then in verses 3-5, the writer of John declares:

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 

Verse 9 then goes on to say:

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

For John, the gospel of Jesus must be framed in the language of enlightenment - a theme repeated in Jn. 8:12, where Jesus declares: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." (emphasis mine)

Matthew uses the same metaphorical imagery when he quotes Isa. 9:2 in Mt. 4:16:

[T]he people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.

Later on, Matthew has Jesus commanding his followers in Mt. 5:16:

[L]et your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

This theme appears all over the Bible (in the scriptures of other religions as well), and it is interesting to me that verses like Ps. 27:1 and I Jn. 1:5 say that God is light.

In my opinion, it seems very clear that these verses are not speaking literally, but are using light as a metaphor for consciousness.  When we "see" the light, we become enlightened - we change from a state of unconsciousness (spoken of very poetically as a state of death) to a state of higher awareness, and then if we let our light shine before others, as Jesus says, we cause them to become more conscious or more aware as well.

I find it even more interesting that the book of I John uses light and love interchangeably.  God is said to be light (I Jn. 1:5) and God is said to be love (I Jn. 4:8, 16).  And compare I John 1:6-7:

If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another[....]

To the language of the fourth chapter of I John - specifically the verses where the author says that "whoever does not love does not know God" (vs. 8), and that "those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them." (vs. 16)

In the mystical view of the author of I John, love is that which enlightens and raises us to a higher consciousness. 

Or could it be better stated that love is the source of consciousness?

When we contemplate consciousness and light, there are some important parallels - light has no mass and does not seem to be a part of the universe in the same way as "physical" or "material" things (we'll discuss the problem with this language later).  Consciousness, likewise, is an incredible mystery that science has only recently begun to contemplate more seriously, and while earlier scientific paradigms insisted that consciousness was merely an illusionary epiphenomenon arising out of the material of the brain, more recent science has uncovered the fact that consciousness is a much more complicated problem (more on that in a bit).  Thus, it seems as though consciousness, like light, has no mass and is not part of the "physical" or "material" universe. 

We cannot define the material of consciousness - consciousness cannot be reduced to the parts it seems to be made of.  Buddhism provided a wonderful parable to illustrate this.  The story goes that Buddha asked one of his disciples to remove the wheels and axle of a cart, and then asked the student if he had disposed of the cart - "no", was the answer.  Buddha replies "Good, I did not ask you to burn the cart. You merely disposed of the wheels, the axle, the body, and the yoke. Where is the cart then?"  The point made is that if we were to fully dismantle a cart and throw each piece into a pile, this would not make a cart, because a cart is more than the sum of its parts.  Likewise, consciousness cannot be reduced to a scrap heap of parts - we cannot define consciousness as the sum of the parts which seem to make it.  Consciousness is an idea which encompasses many things - ideas and thoughts flow in and out of consciousness and we cannot reduce the nature of consciousness to the sum of these ideas.  And so, after demonstrating with the pile of cart pieces, Buddha asks: "where is the self?"  This is a mysterious question we seem to be incapable of providing a definitive answer for.

This is analogous to the idea of God, and helps us make sense of how we are made in the image of God - we are more than the sum of our parts, because we can take the parts away and still say “this is me”.  While I would not be happy about this, I could lose an arm, a leg, I could even lose memories, and I would not have ceased to exist.  I am more than the sum of my parts.  I cannot point to anything concrete and say "there - that is where my consciousness resides."

Even more mysterious is another parallel - while light seems to be fundamental to the laws of the universe, consciousness seems to be as well.

Quantum Weirdness
I have mentioned a few times now that science has shifted from the paradigm of "Newtonian Physics" to another paradigm - we could call this new paradigm the Quantum Paradigm.  To put this another way that will clarify the nature of the shift, Quantum Mechanics presents some serious problems with the philosophy of materialism - the idea that everything is made of "stuff" called "matter". 

As a side note, with the paradigm shift that occurred in the Age of Enlightenment, of which Newton played a bit role, most popular forms of Christianity seem to have gone back to the heresy of Gnosticism - specifically the following beliefs:

• that there are two realms of reality (the material realm and the spiritual realm),
• that the goal of Christianity is to escape the material realm (effectively rendering the material realm "evil", or at least beyond the hope of being redeemed), and
• that holding the right beliefs (understood as having ideas in one's head that one insists are true, no matter what contrary evidence seems to show) is what gives us the golden ticket into the spiritual realm, so to speak.

To explain why Quantum Mechanics causes problems with materialism, I need to attempt, once again, to summarize some extremely complicated and confusing scientific concepts.  By the way, you really shouldn't take my word for it, but should read some books by smarter people than myself on the subject (I will suggest some specifically later on in this post).  The quantum world is really quite fascinating.  But here goes nothing.

Uncertainty
The first thing that is strange about Quantum Mechanics is uncertainty.  Uncertainty doesn't sit so well within the materialism of Newtonian Physics - Newtonian Physics is all about being able to predict things very precisely.  But you can't predict quantum events very precisely - in the quantum world, you have to speak in terms of probability.  A diagram will demonstrate:

What this diagram is showing is that if we look for a quantum particle, there is a higher probability that it will be near the center of the range of probability than near the edges.  These probabilities are quite reliable, and technology has been built using the math behind this science - but in the world of Newtonian Physics, it's a bit strange that we can't predict precisely where a particle will be. 

As a side note, if my readers are interested in the free will/determinism (or free will/predestination in theological terms) or Calvinism/Arminianism debate, you might want to check into how uncertainty complicates the whole matter - you can watch this video (with Michio Kaku), or read articles like this one, this one, or this one.

Einstein himself was so uncomfortable with uncertainty that he famously said: "God doesn't play dice with the world."  To which the famous Quantum Physicist Niels Bohr replied: "Stop telling God what to do with his dice."

But it gets even weirder with something called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.  The simplest way of stating this principle is that we cannot simultaneously know the location of a particle and it's speed, and that the more certain we are of one, the less certain we will be of the other.

But things get weirder.

The Double-Slit Experiment
As I said before, Einstein introduced the idea that light was made up of particles (which we now call photons) rather than being a wave.  However, it's a bit more complicated.  You see, quantum particles such as photons and electrons act like a particle under certain circumstances, and like a wave in others.  Actually, to put it more precisely (and more confusingly), quantum particles act like a wave when we're not looking, and like a particle when we are.  It's like a child who squirms and wiggles when her parent is not looking, and sits still whenever the parent glances at her.

Don't believe me?  I wouldn't either.  Except that it's been proven over and over again by one of the most repeated and famous experiments in history - the double-slit experiment. 

The basic principle is this: when you direct light at a barrier with two slits, you ought to see one pattern if light is a particle and another if it is a wave.  The two patterns are demonstrated in the following illustration:

The bottom pattern is what you'd call a wave interference pattern - you can demonstrate this kind of interference next time you're in shallow water by stomping both feet at the same time, and observing how the two waves cancel each other out in certain places.

If you shine a lightbulb at a model of the double-slit experiment, you will notice that the outcome is the wave interference pattern:

So Einstein was wrong then - light is a wave, right?  Well...when pictures are captured with dim light, have you ever noticed that they get grainy?

How can light be both a wave and a particle?

Here's where things get really weird.  One of the original versions of the double-slit experiment involves setting up a scenario similar to the illustration above with an electron gun, like so:

It gets weird when they reduce the stream of electrons to where they can be certain that only one electron is being fired at a time...and they still get the wave interference pattern.  What's so strange about that can be easily demonstrated by asking the question: where is the interference coming from?

It gets even weirder, though, when scientists try to figure out more of what's going on by adding an "observer" to help them figure out which slit the electron is going through.  There are a variety of ways to do that, but no matter what they've tried, what happens when they add an observer is that they no longer get a wave interference pattern: they get a particle pattern instead.  Like I said - it's like the kid who stops wiggling as soon as her parent glances at her.

When adding an observer to the experiment results in a particle pattern, this is referred to as collapsing the wave.

This video provides a good demonstration of what happens with the double-slit experiment:

Well, that's certainly strange, but it gets even weirder.  I'm going to tell you about another version of the double-slit experiment, but first I have to explain another strange concept in Quantum Mechanics.  This concept is so weird, that Einstein made fun of it and called it "spooky action at a distance."  A more technical name for the concept is Quantum Entanglement. 

Basically, when two quantum particles become entangled (and I won't go into how this is done, because I'll massacre it), an action that changes one particle changes the other instantaneously.  And I do mean instantaneously - faster than the speed of light.  Tests have been done.

Just so you know I'm not making this up, I'm going to let a very smart man explain this to you:

Things get interesting when entanglement was added as a factor in the double-slit experiment.  Here's how it's done (and in case I mangle this, this paper explains the same concept): first off, one of the ways that an "observer" has been added to the double slit experiment is to use photons instead of electrons, and to use what's called a quarter wave plate in front of each slit - one plate would be configured to only allow positive polarized photons through, and the other would only allow negative polarized photons through:

Of course, once you do this, there is no longer a wave interference pattern.  But let's say we entangle two photons and shoot them in different directions, like so:

On either side there is a double-slit experiment - and though it's not represented well in the diagram above, one version of this experiment puts the detector for line P (Detector Dp) closer to the photon firing mechanism than the detector for line S (Detector Ds).  We then add the quarter wave plate observers for line S:

 
In this scenario, you would think that if we added an observer to the scenario for S, the results of the experiment for line P would still show a wave interference pattern - because line P is a shorter path, and so one would imagine that when the observer collapses the wave for line S, this will have occurred after the measurements for line P have already occurred.  But what is so strange is that the results show a particle pattern for Detector Dp - implying that the collapse of the wave occurred not only faster than the speed of light, but retroactively through time.  

You can read about other versions of this scenario if you look for John Bell's test experiments, or the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox.  To explain the latter, I found the following illustration and quoted explanation on this article:

The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment verified by Aspect et al. (1982); Tittel et al. (1998), and many others. On the left is an isolated, entangled pair of superpositioned complementary quantum particles, e.g., two electrons in spin up and spin down states. The pair is separated and sent to two different, spatially-separated locations/measuring devices. The single electron at the top (in superposition of both spin up and spin down states) is measured, and reduces to a single classical state (e.g., spin down). Instantaneously its spatially-separated twin reduces to the complementary state of spin up (or vice versa). The effect is instantaneous over significant distance, hence appears to be transmitted faster than the speed of light. According to Penrose (2004; cf. Bennett and Wiesner, 1992), measurement/reduction of the electron at the top sends quantum information backward in time to the origin of the unified entanglement, then onward to the twin electron. No other reasonable explanation has been put forth.

So here's where all of this coincides with mysticism - what many scientists and others aware of these results have begun to conclude is basically stated in this way: the double-slit experiment implies that matter arises from consciousness, rather than consciousness from matter.  In other words, consciousness creates our reality.  Time and time again the double-slit experiment has shown that at a quantum level, what we call "matter" only exists as potentia prior to being observed, and that somehow our conscious perception of this "matter" causes this potentia to become "reality" - or "collapses the wave", as it is sometimes spoken of.  This has even been reproduced (quite recently) at the atomic level with helium scattered by light.  

As Bernard Haisch puts it in "The God Theory: Universes, Zero-point Fields, and What's Behind It All":

By limiting the infinitely possible, you create the finitely real.

One interesting question that has been asked in light of this: if we stop looking at the moon, does it stop "existing" (or become "wavy", or go back to being potentia)?  To ask this question is, I feel, a misunderstanding of the complexity of what I'm saying.  I am saying that our individual consciousnesses are part of a larger reality - the Source. This is what we call God, and God - the "ground of being" as Paul Tillich puts it - is the Consciousness: the flame from which the sparks of our individual consciousnesses come.  So a better question would be: if God forgets about the moon, does it cease to exist?

Don't Take My Word For It - Read!
If all this sounds just a bit too crazy, consider the fact that some of the greatest minds in modern scientific history - minds who developed the initial science of Quantum Mechanics - have come to the same conclusions.  Niels Bohr, called the father of Quantum Theory, once said: "Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."  He has also notably said: "If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet."  Bohr is also recorded by Werner Heisenberg in "Physics and Beyond" as having said:

We can admittedly find nothing in physics or chemistry that has even a remote bearing on consciousness. Yet all of us know that there is such a thing as consciousness, simply because we have it ourselves. Hence consciousness must be part of nature, or, more generally, of reality, which means that, quite apart from the laws of physics and chemistry, as laid down in quantum theory, we must also consider laws of a quite different kind. 

Influential biologist Robert Lanza writes in "Rethinking Immortality":

That matter is the mere surface of reality was evident even to Einstein, who, when asked by Ben-Gurion if he believed in God, responded to the effect, "There must be something behind the energy." That something, it seems is the human mind. The physicist stares into the world of the atom and finds there elementary particles that spring into existence as real objects only when he observes them. As John Wheeler, the Nobel laureate, puts it, "No phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." If the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which most physicists now accept, is not in error, it is not possible to formulate the laws of natural science quantum theory imply that consciousness must exist, and that the content of the mind is the ultimate reality.

Lanza - currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine (according to his Bio) - has received numerous awards and recognition, and has written what is considered to be the premier reference book in the field of tissue engineering (among many other books and articles).  He also wrote "Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe", which very clearly and logically explains the evidence and scientific concepts which have led to the conclusion that we live in, as Lanza puts it, an "observer-created reality".  In his book on Biocentrism, he writes:

Indeed, Eugene Wigner, one of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, stated that it is “not possible to formulate the laws of [physics] in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness [of the observer].”

Dr. Amit Goswami, a theoretical quantum physicist, wrote a similar book entitled "The Self-Aware Universe".  Goswami thoroughly explains the science of quantum physics, as well as delving into philosophy and eastern mysticism (he even quotes some Christian mystics!).  His book has a particularly exotic flair that I appreciated, as he is coming from a Hindu background.  His book also delves into the science behind meditation and the connections with these concepts.

Dr. Bernard Haisch is an accomplished astrophysicist who studied the physics of light specifically in relation to the sun, and worked with Alfonzo Rueda to develop the theory of stochastic electrodynamics.  His book entitled "The God Theory: Universes, Zero-point Fields, and What's Behind It All" develops on subject of a zero point field of light (a theory he and Rueda did some ground breaking work on) as being the ground of all Being, and consciousness as an expression of this Being, and he does this using language that is very sensitive to spiritual/religious seekers.  Haisch has also written a book titled "The Purpose-Guided Universe: Believing In Einstein, Darwin, and God", which I have not currently read at the time of this writing.

Peter Russell studied mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge (receiving an honors degree, which is the English equivalent of summa cum laude), before he became so fascinated by the problem of consciousness (meaning, the question: what is consciousness?), that he switched to studying experimental psychology.  In his continual pursuit, he traveled to India to learn meditation, and conducted research into the neurophysiology of meditation at the University of Bristol.  He writes about this, and the conclusions he has come to through his process, in "From Science to God: A Physicist's Journey into the Mystery of Consciousness". 

These are just some of the ones I've read!  I have plenty more on my "to read" list - such as:

• "The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World" and "The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?", by Paul Davies.  Davies is a physicist, and is quoted in "The God Theory" as saying that he has "come to the point of view that mind - i.e. conscious awareness of the world - is not a meaningless and incidental quirk of nature, but an absolutely fundamental facet of reality."
• "Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship" and "Science and Religion in Quest of Truth" by the Rev Dr John Charlton Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS, who has the coolest name ever, with all those titles around it, haha!  I have, by the way, read "Questions of Truth" with Polkinghorne co-writing with Nicholas Beale, and it was excellent - this one is in a question and answer format where the authors deal with direct questions from online users of their website.
•  "Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness", by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner.
• "The Nature of the Physical World" by Sir Arthur Eddington - a British astronomer, physicist, and mathematician of the early 20th century who is quoted in "The God Theory" as saying "that the physical world is entirely abstract and without “actuality” apart from its linkage to consciousness" and that consciousness is in "the fundamental position" rather than "an inessential complication occasionally found in the midst of inorganic nature at a late stage of evolutionary history."
• Sir James Jeans was a contemporary of Eddington, and was a physicist, astronomer, and mathematician with a mystical view of reality - "The Mysterious Universe" was a book he wrote marrying science with spiritual views.
• "Eternity: God, Soul, New Physics", by Trevelyan.

There is another angle to this problem that adds some interesting nuance - and that angle has to do with the connection between the brain and consciousness.

What About the Brain?
One question you might ask in response to this is: what about the brain?  Since we know that the mechanics of the brain can change the nature of consciousness, doesn't that debunk the whole concept of consciousness as the ground of reality (or "observer-created reality", as Robert Lanza puts it)?


As I noted in my post on "The Science of Evil" and privatio boni, there are cases like Phineas Gage where we find that a change to the mechanism of the brain changes the way consciousness functions.  When considering how damage to brain impairs mental functions, materialists have concluded that the brain is the source of the mind, and the mind is simply an epiphenomenon of the brain.



But things get a bit more complicated when you factor in the placebo effect.  You see, not only can the brain change consciousness, but consciousness has the power to rewire the brain.  Dr. Joe Dispenza wrote a book called "You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter" recounting dozens of stories exemplifying how consciousness is able to alter the body and the brain, and he spends some time explaining the science behind how this works, as well as how to make it work on yourself.  Dr. Dispenza teaches that the meditative process - which has been proven to be able to activate bodily changes even to the genetic level - is a process of transformation where participants discover that they are "divine creators".  He calls his process "information to transformation".  Dr. Dispenza writes in his book:

I believe that there’s an intelligence, an invisible consciousness, within each of us that’s the giver of life. It supports, maintains, protects, and heals us every moment. It creates almost 100 trillion specialized cells (starting from only 2), it keeps our hearts beating hundreds of thousands of times per day, and it can organize hundreds of thousands of chemical reactions in a single cell in every second— among many other amazing functions.

(Another great book that draws out the need for nuance in understanding the relationship between brain and consciousness is "Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind and the Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives", by Dr. Mario Beauregard.)

Consider the analogy William James - the father of modern psychology - gave in 1898: he proposed that the brain is like a prism with light being consciousness itself.  With this analogy, while the prism (the brain) affects and changes the way we perceive the light (consciousness), it is not the source of that light.

Consciousness has also been compared to the light from a projector shining on a screen - the screen is a bit like the brain, and the images shone on it are our perceptions, feelings, and memories.  While changes to the screen can alter the way we perceive the picture on it, consciousness is the light itself, and while it may flow in different wavelengths in order to create an array of colors, it is always light.  And just like we do not normally think about how all the images we see on a movie screen are composed of this light, we also do not think about how our perceptions, feelings, and memories are all composed of our consciousness, and do not in themselves define our being.  There is a disconnect between our perceptions and reality that we don’t normally consider as well.  There is an old philosophical query that was meant to be a joke: "if a tree falls in the middle of the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"  But joking aside - the correct answer is actually "no".  While the air in the forest still forms waves that would have been perceived as sound if someone had been around to hear it, since what we call "sound" is really a perception based on those waves, then if no one was around to perceive those waves, there is no experience of "sound".  As George Berkely once said, "the only things we perceive are our perceptions."

The fundamental problem that science is always struggling against is that there is no way to get into an objective position from which to observe the system we are within - the laws of the system produced the observer which is attempting to observe the system!  Going back to the analogy of sound, we must realize that everyone else's perception of sound might actually be different than our own.  As a personal example, I have very insensitive ears compared to my wife’s sensitive ears, because I have been to far too many loud Metal concerts (ha!  Too many - as if there was such a thing!).  Similarly, Dogs can hear frequencies that we are totally unaware of, and can also smell a person’s scent hours after they have left - enabling them to track other creatures with their sense of smell.  So we must always wonder how much we are missing - what possibilities of perception are out there that we simply do not have the equipment to perceive?

Even Einstein saw this truth within the physical laws of the universe - he was a pantheist rather than a panentheist, and once said:

...a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

In Peter Russell's book, "From Science to God: A Physicist's Journey into the Mystery of Consciousness", he writes:

When science sees consciousness to be a fundamental quality of reality, and religion takes God to be the light of consciousness shining within us all, the two worldviews start to converge.

Nothing is lost in this convergence. Mathematics remains the same; so do physics, biology, chemistry. The shift may throw new light on some of the paradoxes of relativity and quantum theory, but the theories themselves do not change. This inclusion is a common pattern in paradigm shifts: the new model of reality includes the old as a special case.

He goes on to write about how the spiritual paradigm shift is very similar:

The same integrity is maintained on the spiritual side. Much of the wisdom accumulated over the ages remains unchanged; forgiveness, kindness, and love are as important as they ever were. Many of the qualities traditionally ascribed to God remain, being equally applicable to the faculty of consciousness. The difference is that spiritual teachings and scientific knowledge now share a common ground.

As Christians who see God revealing God's self through Creation, we need to drop the war between theology and science.  We need to see how science can enhance faith, rather than seeing it as an enemy.  Mysticism, I believe, is where this can happen, and where we can find a convergence.


In the area of consciousness, there is a powerful faith to be found - a faith that can embrace mystery without falling into depression and fear.  Rene Descartes once said: "Consciousness is the one absolute truth which cannot be doubted."  This panentheistic view of God I have been writing about is, basically stated, that God cannot be found in space or time, but rather is found within - in  "deep mind".  This is why so often we feel as if we’ve found God in a place and time, but then later may doubt our experience.  It is because we are not in tune with God within that what we experience outside seems to be so confusing.  When we realize that God is within all, and that the path to discovering divinity is found through love, which is the mystical wavelength that ties spirits together just as atoms are mysteriously bound together, we can begin to really tune in.

In a passage reminiscent of the phrase from Psalm 46:10, "be still and know that I Am God", Thomas Merton wrote:

If I penetrate to the depths of my own existence and my own present reality, the indefinable am that is myself in its deepest roots, then through this deep center I pass into the infinite I am which is the very Name of the Almighty.

Next Chapter: The Tree of Life.

Judaism and the Mystical Christ, Ch. 8: The Image of God

Note: This is part of an ongoing series entitled "Judaism and the Mystical Christ".  I have created a blog entry containing the table of contents linking to each article which may be accessed here:
 
Table of Contents

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The Image of God

This would probably qualify as "pseudo-science", but it's kinda neat.

There have been many interpretations of the phrase in Genesis 1:26: "Let us make humankind in our image."  To understand this phrase, the first thing we ought to do is consider how it would have sounded in the ancient context.

In the ancient world, rulers and kings would quite often construct statues of themselves - images of the king - that they would leave in the areas that were far from the king's own home. This was a subtle way of reinforcing their own authority - sort of reminding their citizens that they are keeping an eye on this area (even if it it through messengers).  It was also a way to make sure that if the king ever visited, he would be recognized.

Additionally, it was quite common for rulers to claim to bear the image of their god.  For example, in Egypt, the Pharaoh was considered to be the sole person to bear the image of their god - and was considered to be an incarnation of the sun god Ra.  Thus, every citizen was inherently inferior to Pharaoh.

So in light of this, it seems that the Hebrew concept of the image of God - where all of mankind is made in God's image - is politically subversive.  

Quoting from the Dueteronomy Rabbah (4:4), Rodger Kamenetz writes in "The Jew in the Lotus":

There is a beautiful Hasidic teaching, that before every human being comes a retinue of angels, announcing, “Make way for an image of the Holy One, Blessed be He.” How rarely do we listen for those angels when we encounter another human being. How rarely do we see in another human being’s eyes an image of everything we hold most dear.

This saying parallels the way Jesus asks us to find the image of God in the humble when he tells the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  This reminds me of the scene in "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" where Luke Skywalker meets Yoda for the first time.  When they meet, Luke merely believes that he has met a strange and eccentric (possibly crazy) little creature.  He never even stops to think that this short, shriveled, odd little thing could be a great Jedi Master.  In the same way, we miss the image of God when we only expect to find it in those who are beautiful by human standards - the Bible asks us to see the image of God in every man and woman and child, especially within the humble, the overlooked, the marginalized.

Note also that the language of Genesis 1:26 hints at a mystical view when God says "let us make man in our image" - how can God be one (as the famous opening words of the shema state in Deut. 6:4), but pluralistic?  Biology itself teases at the answer - each cell in our bodies is designated a different task, and we have different types of cells, and yet each cell contains a set of chromosomes that is identical to the set possessed by every other cell in the body.  Paul teases at such a mystical view when he refers to us as the body of Christ (see I Cor. 12:27, Rom. 12:5).  

Jews refer to Deut. 6:4 - "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!" - as the Shema (the first word is shema), and it is a central prayer in their practice.  But one very interesting fact about this prayer is missed by English speakers - the original Hebrew uses both the names "Adonai" (translated "Lord", above) and "Elohim" (translated "God", above).  Elohim is, technically, plural - and thus a literal translation might read "the Lord our gods, the Lord is One."  It is also interesting to note here that the word "Elohim" is rendered "sons of the Most High" in Psalm 82:6:

I said, "You are gods,
And all of you are sons of the Most High."

Rabbi Cooper renders an interesting translation of the Shema in "God Is a Verb":

Shema Yisrael, Adonoy Elohaynu, Adonoy Ehad (Hear, O Israel, the Lord is Our God, the Lord is One) . The way I explain the meaning of this prayer is as follows: Listen closely (Shema), that part within each of us that yearns to go directly to God (Israel-Yashar El), the transcendent, unknowable source of sources (Adonoy) and the God that we are able to relate to in Its immanence in everything we experience around us (Elohaynu), both the transcendent (Adonoy) and the immanent, are actually, paradoxically, one and the same (Ehad).

I've seen a number of modern Jewish mystics use a powerful metaphor to help understand how every human being bears the image of God.  They use the analogy of a hologram to express this.  When a piece of film containing a normal photograph is cut in half, you will have two halves of an image.  But when a piece of film that a holograph was recorded on is cut in half, you have the same image on both halves - just slightly out of focus (see Holography vs. Photography).  One way Kabbalists have put this is that we are the "thousand mirrors of God."

The analogy can be extended further when we consider Jesus' saying in Mt. 18:20: "where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."  If each person is like a part of the holographic film separated from the rest, then all of God is contained in each person just like the entire image of the hologram is contained within each part of the film - though the image will be out of focus.  But by drawing together in the Unity of Love, we bring the image back into focus.

In conjunction with this concept, it is interesting to consider the mystical version of the "Golden Rule" that is found in the Gospel of Thomas:

Love your friends like your own soul, protect them like the pupil of your eye.

This version connects love with sight - implying that without such love, we cannot see clearly.  There is a connection here to Matthew 6:22-23 - in his commentary on Matthew, William Barclay’s translation renders this: 

The light of the body is the eye. So then, if your eye is generous, the whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is grudging, your whole body will be in the dark. If, then, the light which is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

The word that is often translated in this verse as "sound" ("if your eye is sound") - haplous - can also mean "generous", and since the opposite word used here - poneros - is quite often used in the Bible to speak of being grudging, Barclay argues that this verse is telling us that the key to seeing clearly is generosity.

An interesting parallel can be found in an old Hasidic tale, where a Rabbi asks his students how to determine the hour of dawn - the hour when night ends and day begins.  Various answers are offered, and finally the Rabbi declares that the way to determine this is "when you can look into the face of another human being and you have enough light in you to recognize your brother or your sister. Until then it is night and darkness is still with us."

We are to even see the image of God in our enemies - note that this is not a concept introduced for the first time by Jesus when he commanded enemy love (Mt. 5:43-48).  It is interesting to note here that when Jacob (then Israel - literally "wrestles with God") goes to reconcile with his brother Esau, Gen. 33:3 says that he prostrated himself 7 times.  The word used here is "shachah", which is used not just to speak of an act of prostration before a monarch, but before God as well.  And after their reconciliation, Israel says to Esau in verse 10: "truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God."  Could this be hinting to the greater truth of finding the image of God in our enemy?  

Some will say "what about sin" - the Augustinian view that has (unfortunately) become popular in the West teaches that when man sinned, man lost the original state he was in.  Augustine's view led to Calvinism's teaching on Total Depravity, where we are identified by our sin.  But the Jewish view of sin and the Image of God is a bit more similar to the Orthodox view.  A popular analogy compares human beings to an oil lamp, and the Image of God is like a spark from the flame of God that lights the lamp inside.  Sin, in this image, is like the dust that collects on the glass of the lamp - it does not remove the flame, does not corrupt it, but merely dims the light that comes from this flame.  The dust can be cleaned, and the light will shine clearly once again.  

A similar analogy was used by Fr. Joseph Gleason on his blog, where he writes:

It is as if we had a magnificent portrait of the King, caked over with cobwebs and mud and dust. The filth itself may be worthless and offensive, but the portrait remains extremely valuable. Intentional destruction of this portrait would offend the King Himself.  So we must not destroy the painting . . . we must clean it off and restore it.

This is how God views every human being. Each one was created in His Image, and therefore each human is of infinite value.  A man does not become worthless, regardless of his guilt.  A woman does not become worthless, no matter what she has done.

The concept of being "made in the image of God" takes on new meaning through Evolution - as Julian Huxley said: 

We are nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself.

This is similar to the way the Kabbalists will speak of the Universe as God unfolding Him-Her-It-Self.

This is why God gives Moses the vague reply to a request for a name (Ex. 3:14): "I am"  - this implies pure consciousness.  "I am" does not quite capture the mystery of the original language - though some translations say "I will be what I will be".   The original language implies all tenses - "is", "was", and "will be" - thus, God is "is-ness", or the essense of Being itself.

In "The Gift of the Jews", Thomas Cahill writes:

YHWH is an archaic form of the verb to be; and when all the commentaries are taken into account, there remain but three outstanding possibilities of interpretation, none of them mutually exclusive. First, I am who am: this is the interpretation of the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which because of its age and its links to the ancients bears great authority. It was this translation that Thomas Aquinas used in the thirteenth century to build his theology of God as the only being whose essence is Existence, all other beings being contingent on God, who is Being (or Is-ness) itself. A more precise translation of this idea could be: “I am he who causes (things) to be” - that is, “I am the Creator.” Second, I am who I am - in other words, “None of your business” or “You cannot control me by invoking my name (and therefore my essence) as if I were one of your household gods.” Third, I will be-there with you: this is Fox’s translation, following Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, which emphasizes God’s continuing presence in his creation, his being-there with us.

In the view of God as "Is-ness", God is in the process of manifesting within the world, and much is still concealed from us.  Our task is not to do anything that will magically change us, but rather to reveal the image of God which was already within - though not fully manifest, just as a piece of a hologram contains the entire image, though out of focus.  By expanding our consciousness through connecting with the rest of Creation which also contains pieces of the hologram, we can reveal the image of God more fully.  This is why St. Gregory of Nyssa writes in "On the Creation of Man":

It is not in a part of [human] nature that the image is found, but nature in its totality is the image of God. 

Indeed, Gregory states in this work that:

It is the whole of nature, extending from the beginning to the end, that constitutes the one image of God. 

Gregory's reasoning is stated elsewhere regarding the statement that man was made "in the image of God":

[T]his is the same as to say that He made human nature participant in all good; for if the Deity is the fullness of good, and this is His image, then the image finds its resemblance to the Archetype in being filled with all good.

The idea of nature as image of God is corroborated in mystical Judaism, as we've seen already.  One of the early Kabbalists, Moses Cordovero, writes in "Shi'ur Qomah":

The essence of divinity is found in every single thing - nothing but it exists. Since it causes every thing to be, no thing can live by anything else. It enlivens them; its existence exists in each existent.

In another of his writings - Elimah Rabbati - he writes:

Before anything emanated, there was only Ein Sof.  Ein Sof was all that existed. Similarly after it brought into being all that exists, there is nothing but it. You cannot find anything that exists apart from it . . . God is everything that exists, though everything that exists is not God. It is present in everything, and everything comes into being from it. Nothing is devoid of its divinity.  Everything is within it; it is within everything and outside of everything. There is nothing but it.

So you might be thinking, at this point, something along the lines of: "well, all this sounds wonderful, but it's a bit out there.  And I don't see how any of this can be practically merged with our current understanding of science."

I'd like to attempt to address this by introducing just how weird science has gotten.  It seems that the popular understanding is stuck in an outdated form of scientific thinking that might be termed "Newtonian Physics" - after Isaac Newton.  Please understand here that I'm not knocking on Newton: he was a brilliant man.  It's just that the way of thinking - the paradigm - that he was under is outdated.  We have new information now that challenges the Newtonian paradigm.  I will delve into this a bit in the next post.

Next Chapter: Let There Be Light

Judaism and the Mystical Christ, Ch. 7: Beginning

Note: This is part of an ongoing series entitled "Judaism and the Mystical Christ".  I have created a blog entry containing the table of contents linking to each article which may be accessed here:
 
Table of Contents

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Beginning

There is a very interesting interpretation within the tradition of Kabbalah for the phrase in Gen. 3:15: "he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel."  The reasoning goes: "head" and "heel" are words that sometimes represent the beginning of an era (the head) and the end of an era (the heel).  Thus, this verse would represent how those who grasp at preserving their un-expanded consciousness (from the old era) are like the serpent striking out at the new era - but they will be crushed by the inevitability of the movement of time.

This view also plays in nicely with another interesting interpretation of Genesis 1:1 - the original language would not have had capital letters or punctuation, and so we must guess at where these would occur.  Also, the grammar for Hebrew and English are a bit different, and so Genesis 1:1 in the original language would have read more like “In the beginning created God (Elohim) the heavens and the earth.”  Furthermore, the language is a bit more ambiguous than we realize, and so "in the beginning" could have also been "with the beginning" or "with a beginning" - Rashi ( who may have written the the most famous Jewish Torah commentaries ever) translates the phrase as "in a beginning."  Rodger Kamenetz writes about this translation in "The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet's Rediscovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India":

“[I]n a beginning” suggests that the biblical account of creation is not intended as a rigid recitation of God’s plan, the way fundamentalists often argue, but something looser, more creative. “In a beginning” could mean something like, “one way of telling the story.” This teaching liberated me from my own unconscious fundamentalism, my own rigidity about the Torah. It suggests that there is much more freedom to be found in its language than I’d thought, if only I would take another look.

Neil Gaiman has written one of the most popular graphic novel series in history - The Sandman.  It is a brilliant piece of modern mythology, full of powerful and provocative metaphor.  He begins the second volume of the series with this introduction:

In the beginning...

But of course we never see the beginning. We come in the middle, after the lights have gone down, and try to make sense of the story so far. Whisper to our neighbours “Who's he? Who's she? Have they met each other before?”
We get by.

Even if we were to insist that Genesis marks the beginning - doesn't Christianity believe that there was something before this beginning? (At the least, God existed before.)

The Genesis Rabbah has an interesting take on the order of the words in Genesis 1:1:

The title of an earthly king precedes his name, for instance, Emperor Augustus, etc. Not so was the will of the King of kings; He is only known as God after creating heaven and earth. Thus it is not said יהלא ארבם (God created), but םיהלא ארב. 'In the beginning created God heavens and earth'; He is not mentioned as God before He created.

Keeping in mind that there was no punctuation in the original language, we know that we must make a choice as to where to put the punctuation.  One provocative interpretation of Genesis 1:1 offers that perhaps the verse should read:

With the Beginning, created Elohim, the heavens and the earth.

The idea of this interpretation is that "Elohim", being a human concept of God, is a step of removal from the real thing.  And thus "Elohim" is not God, but is an aspect of the infinite God, and thus the true God is Beginning itself - not in the finite noun sense as in a point in time, but as in the continual process of Beginning (hence, Rabbi Cooper's fascinating book title: "God Is a Verb").  God is the continual Creative process that constantly causes growth, and Creation is continually emanating from God.  This turns the "eternity" of God into a divine paradox of radical temporality - God is not a perfect state that exists in eternal changelessness, but rather God is the unchanging nature of the continually changing Beginning.  God is the force that brings continual change through the growth of Beginning.

This interpretation of Genesis 1:1 gains more plausibility when we also take into account the fact that "Elohim" is a plural word - literally "gods".  The word "Elohim" is the same word used in the command from Ex. 20:3:

You shall have no other gods before me.

C.S. Lewis backs this view of a dynamic God of Beginning - in Mere Christianity, he writes:

In Christianity, God is not a static thing - not even a person - but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.

While the views of Young Earth Creationists say that God created once and only once and then stopped, never to create again, and man has no part to play in this process - Evolution says that God is constantly, continually exercising God's creative powers and that God incorporates us into this process.  "Let there be..." is the language repeatedly used in Genesis 1 - an invitation to participate.  I feel that Ilia Delio captures this sentiment in this quote from her book "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love":

[E]volution kindles the dawn of postmodernity because it marks the break from a closed, static world of law and order to an open world of change and play.  ...Evolution tells us that nature is not a closed, causal system of events but a complex series of fluid, dynamic, interlocking, and communicative relationships.

Likewise, Rabbi David Cooper writes ("God Is a Verb"):

[Kabbalah]  says that creation is not something that happened at some point in time; creation is happening at all times.  It is happening right now.

In this view, God is the Source of all life, and continually emanates the energy that causes Creation.  In some versions of this belief, if God were to stop for even one moment, all of Creation would cease to be (as in a lightbulb and the light it emanates).  

Note how Genesis 1 records the end of each of the first six days, but not of the seventh. This may imply that the 7th day is still ongoing, and that seems to be affirmed in the New Testament, as Hebrews 4:1-11 speaks of the Sabbath as God's ongoing state of rest into which the righteous are welcomed to join.

If we are to accept this, we must understand that this concept changes the way we think of perfection - if God is Beginning, then perfection itself is the act of perfecting, and thus the idea that there is a finite point which can be defined as perfection is absurd.

This concept of God is not all that different from the Hindu concept of Brahman (to grow, to expand) - in the Hindu religion, ultimate Reality is described as Brahman, and Guru Nanak described it as “Ek Omkar, Sat Naam” (which is translated as “One Reality, eternally True”).

John Horgan also demonstrates how this concept of God relates to Brahman in "Rational Mysticism: Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for Enlightenment":

According to Hindu myth, Brahman, the cosmic source of all things, creates a new universe with every exhalation. But Brahman itself - the spirit or mind from which all things spring - is eternal.

The Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart once wrote:

God is the newest thing there is, the youngest thing there is. God is the beginning and if we are united to God we become new again.

Jürgen Moltmann begins his masterpiece on Christian Eschatology, "The Coming of God", with the phrase: "In the end is the beginning."   Note here that Revelation 21:5 does not present us with an end, but a beginning - "See, I am making all things new."  This is not an end, but a continuing process.  You might say the end represented in Revelation is a re-beginning.  Moltmann writes:

Wherever life is perceived and lived in community and fellowship with Christ, a new beginning is discovered hidden in every end. What it is I do not know, but I have confidence that the new beginning will find me and raise me up.

Further on in "The Coming of God", Moltmann writes:

Entering into God's coming future makes possible a new human becoming: 'Arise, become light, for your light is coming, and the glory of the Lord is rising upon you' (Isa. 60.1). The proclamation of the near - the coming - the arriving kingdom of God makes human conversion to this future possible. 'Be converted, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand' (Matt. 4.17). This unity between the divine coming and human conversion is 'fulfilled time' (Mark 1.15). The First Epistle of John also links human becoming with the divine coming: 'It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is' (I John 3.2). The writer is talking about the Christ of the parousia. The eschatology of the coming God calls to life the history of new human becoming, which is a becoming without any passing away, a becoming into lasting being in the coming presence of God.

Much of popular Christianity has completely misinterpreted the "second coming" of Christ - seeing it as something they wait for in their La-Z-Boy (and when Jesus comes, he'll fix the mess we've made without our having to lift a finger).  But the word Paul always uses when speaking of Christ's coming is parousia - and in the Roman world, this word was used to describe the arrival of Caesar to a city, where the leaders would organize a parade to meet the Caesar a few miles down the road and escort him into town.  We see this concept echoed in quotes like the above, where we are meant to join in to God's Beginning and partner with God in the act of new creation.  As Ernst Bloch wrote in "The Spirit of Utopia":

Only the wicked exist through their God; but the righteous - God exists through them.

This kind of unity with God is only possible through the self-emptying act of kenosis - the life of unconditional love.  In Philippians 2:6-11, Paul uses this word when he states that though Jesus was in very nature God, he emptied himself.  The word "kenosis", when used in a theological context, involves self-renunciation - a transcendence of ego.  Paul states that it is because of this kenosis that God exalted Jesus - because Jesus was humble he was made great.  Greg Boyd illustrates this concept with the following quote from "The Myth of a Christian Nation":

In the words of Barbara Rossing and John Yoder, borrowing an image from the book of Revelation, the contrast between the “power over” kingdom of the world and the “power under” kingdom of God is “Lion power” versus “Lamb power.” The kingdom of God advances by people lovingly placing themselves under others, in service to others, at cost to themselves. This “coming under” doesn’t mean that followers of Jesus conform to other people’s wishes, but it does mean that we always interact with others with their best interests in mind.

Following the example of Christ, and in stark contrast to the modus operandi of the world, we are to do “nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than [our]selves.” We are to “look not to [our] own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3–4). We are to “not seek [our] own advantage, but that of the other” (1 Cor. 10:24, cf. 10:33). Following Jesus’ example, we are to find honor in washing people’s feet (John 13:14–15)—that is, in serving them in any way we can.

Similar to the concept of kenosis, the Hebrew root of Kabbalah is "to receive" and the word is translated "tradition" - thus it is a receiving tradition, and not forced. 

Ilia Delio writes in "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being" of how the emptying of unconditional love binds us to God:

Love is a consciousness of belonging to another, of being part of a whole. To love is to be on the way toward integral wholeness, to live with an openness of mind and heart, to encounter the other - not as stranger - but as another part of oneself. When we enter into the heart of love, that integral wholeness of love that is God, we enter into the field of relatedness and come to see that we are wholes within wholes. This is the consciousness we need today, an integral wholeness of love that is open to new life; a being-at-home in love that can evolve.

The German Catholic priest, mystic, and poet Angelus Silesius once wrote:

I am eternity when, from time free, I join myself in God with God in me.

Likewise, Moltmann writes:

If, one day, that which in hidden form drives us forward emerges, what will come into being is eternity, i.e., 'absolute time', time which does not pass away, life without death, the unveiled face in God.

Kabbalah holds that the known reality of our world is a partial manifestation of a much bigger reality (infinite, really) which we call God - they often use the term Ein Sof to talk about God.  Ein Sof literally means “there is no end”, and so it is a way of talking about the infinite nature of God. Rabbi David Aaron writes in "The Secret Life of God: Discovering the Divine within You":

The infinite is that which goes on and on in space. However, God created space and is therefore not bound to the laws and limitation of space.

Rabbi Aaron goes on to describe how God is "spaceless" - both beyond space and within space simultaneously - and "timeless" - both beyond time and within every moment of time simultaneously.  As an anonymous philosopher wrote: "God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere."  

When we speak of God as "One", Rabbi Aaron explains, we must be careful to realize that this is not the same as when one is a limitation that is the opposite of many.  In the case of when we use "One" to describe God, this speaks of God’s nonduality, which is free of the confines of one or many.  He writes:

Nonduality is free to be beyond the many and within the many. Therefore, God is beyond you, me, and everyone else in this world, and yet also within us.

Later on he explains the "Oneness" of God like so: 

[T]he oneness of God does not mean that He is only one as opposed to two or three. The oneness of God is an all-encompassing unity that includes multiplicity while remaining one.

The mystical view of Judaism teaches that "I am" is a way of the Divine - which is outside of person-hood as we understand it - expressing itself through the metaphor of person-hood in order accommodate our understanding.  That which is outside of categorization entered into a category we could understand in order that we might be able to reach greater heights of understanding.

Paul Tillich wrote in "Systematic Theology: Volume 1":

It would be a great victory for Christian apologetics if the words “God” and “existence” were very definitely separated except in the paradox of God becoming manifest under the conditions of existence. . . . God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. To argue that God exists is to deny him.

Tillich goes on later to defend this statement with the following logic:

The being of God cannot be understood as the existence of a being alongside others or above others. If God is a being, he is subject to the categories of finitude, especially to space and substance.

Likewise, in "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being", Ilia Delio writes about Raimond Panikkar’s "cosmotheandrism":

God is not created being and created being is not God, but God is one with created / cosmic being and created / cosmic being is one with God.

Later she writes: 

The divine is never alone or by itself because it has no “self”; it is the Whole of the Whole.  The divine mystery is the ultimate AM of everything.

God is not supernatural being residing "out there" - God is rather the supranatural Ground of Being, while at the same time existence is not a category in which God fits into.  God is not a thing, nor is God nothing - rather God is no-thing while being the center of everything.  The love of God is expressed within every being, and yet no being can contain this love and so it spills over into transcendence, which is expressed through the new creation of evolutional Beginning.  God is thus simultaneously in the present and in the future as the fullness of love - in other words, as Ilia Delio puts it: "God is the One who is and who is coming to be."


Next Chapter: The Image of God