Many Lamps

Photo by Mike Labrum

The lamps are different,
but the light is the same.¹

— Rumi

On these pages you’ll find light shining from many lamps, and as such you’ll see a variety of terms that refer to God, G-d, and Gd. For example:

Totality

The One

The Eternal

The Eternal One

One without a Second

Divinity

The Divine

Hashem

Adonai

Allah

I AM

Being

Mind

Spirit

Soul

Principle

Life

Truth

Love

Consciousness

Pure Consciousness

The God-idea

to name a few!

In her book, The Path of Blessing, Rabbi Macia Prager tells of “A noble thinker [who] once challenged Martin Buber” regarding the use of the word ‘God’: 

What you mean by the name of God
is something beyond
all human grasp and comprehension,
but in speaking about it you have
lowered it to human conceptualization.

What word in human speech
is so misused, so defiled,
so desecrated as this!

All the innocent blood
that has been shed for it
has robbed it of its radiance.
All the injustice that it has been used
to cover has effaced its features.

When I hear the highest called ‘God,’
it sometimes seems almost blasphemous.²

Unfortunately the word 'God' has been associated
with the supernatural, instead of the natural—
and with a supreme Being, instead of all Being…³

— Margaret Laird

For many of us, the word God conjures up an image of an old man with a beard, seated on a throne in the sky. Although this image may have served well in Biblical times, it more than hints at time, space, separation, journey, and gender. These objections are resolved when we know God as divine consciousness:

‘Consciousness’ is a [non-religious]
scientific way
of referring to Totality,
One without a Second,
which from a religious point of view
we refer to as Gd.⁴

— Steve Sufian

Even better, is when we acknowledge only one God, one consciousness, one essence, one Being. As a world-renowned Zohar scholar says:

God is not somewhere else
hidden from us,
God is right here, hidden from us.⁵

— Daniel Matt

References

1] Rumi, One One One, http://notdarkyet-commentary.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-lamps-are-different-but-light-is.html • 08.23.21

[2] Marcia Prager, The Path of Blessing, (Jewish Lights Publishing, 1998), p. 79-80

[3] Margaret Laird, What is the Idea?, (Institute of Metaphysical Science, 1953), p. 9

[4] Steve Sufian, Torah and Vedic Scholar, Commentary on Parashat Devarim, Congregation Beth Shalom Newsletter, Fairfield, IA • 07.23.20

[5] Daniel C. Matt, God and the Big Bang, (Jewish Lights Publishing, 1996), p. 171

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