Simran/Zikhr/Remembering/Repeating God’s Name(s)
To Thy Name and to Thy remembrance
is the desire of our soul.
With my soul have I desired Thee in the night;
Yea, with my spirit within me
have I sought Thee earnestly. (Hebrew Bible: Isaiah 26: 8-9)
And nothing lies in the power of a man.
Know then that peace comes from understanding His Will.
So wear His Name like a charm around your neck,
Meditating on Him alone,
And no harm shall approach you.
Let your mind recite the praises of the Absolute Lord.
O my mind, know this to be the righteous course for you.
Keep the tongue pure with the nectar of the Name,
And thereafter will your soul find its peace.
With your eyes, ever see the Lord’s play,
And leave all others, to meet with the company of Saints.
Let your feet carry you in the Way of God,
For by dwelling on the Lord for even a moment, all sins will be
washed off.
With your hands do the Lord’s work, and with your ears hear His
teachings;
Thus will your face be made beautiful in the Court of the Lord.
(Adi Granth, Sikh Scriptures, Peace Lagoon translation)
“One can attain to the Spiritual World through the practice of outward and inward holiness, excessive love of God and the delight in His recollection (zikr) and Holy Names.” (Abraham he-Hasid, Jewish Sufi mystic)
Ascending Through the Heavens Repeating Names of God
“The first century Rabbi Akiva ascended through the seven heavens and the seven palaces in the highest heaven by means of passwords uttered to the angelic gatekeepers. His meetings with God were characterized by luminosity.” (Joan Borysenko, “Seven Paths to God: The Ways of the Mystic”)
The Five Names (Panch Naam) of the Sethians, a Jewish-Gnostic Movement in Antiquity
Name One: Armoz-el of the first region,
Name Two: Oroia-el of the second region,
Name Three: Daveithe of the third region,
Name Four: El-ethe, of the fourth region
The Fifth Aeon…..Fifth Name not translated:
the Divine, is the all-encompassing Self-Begotten One.
The True God is sometime referred to as “The Nameless One” in Gnostic scriptures. In Sant Mat, “Anami” is a term often used for the Nameless Supreme Being, the Most High in the Timeless realm of Pure Spirit, above mind and matter.
A Enlightened Psalm in Praise of the Word and the Light of Gnosis
Thou hast shaped that clay on the Wheel
and passed it through Thy test,
that it may find its way
into Thy lot;
and when cracks appear in it,
Thou mendest them.
Yea, over mere dust
hast Thou wafted Thy Holy Spirit,
and hast so molded that clay
that it can have converse with angels
and be in communion
with Beings Celestial.
From the Fount of His Knowledge has my Light shot forth;
upon His wonders has my Eye gazed.
Mere flesh hast Thou lit
with a Light everlasting,
that there be no reversion to darkness,
and a Light hast Thou revealed
that it never can be turned back.
Your Holy Spirit
illuminates the dark places of the heart
of your servant,
with Light like the sun.
I look to the covenants made by men,
worthless.
Only your Truth shines,
and those who love it are wise
and walk in the Glow
of Your Light.
From darkness You raise hearts.
Let Light shine on your servant.
Your Light is everlasting.
You set your Word
in this ear of dust
and write truths on my heart.
You end my wandering
to bring me into concordance with You
that I may stand, unshaken,
before You
in the Glow of Perfect Light
forever,
where no darkness is
forever,
where unsearchable peace is
forever.
For me, a creature of dust.
(From the Essene Psalm-Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls, “The Dead Sea
Scriptures,” Anchor Books)
Mysticism in Judaism and Sant Mat
How can we know God? Is there a practical method by which we can unite our souls with Him? Mystics teach us that the Lord is Pure Spirit which emanates from the highest spiritual region; He can therefore be known only by our soul, which is of the same divine essence. That divine essence is the inner Word, the holy Name of God, the Audible Life Stream, which manifests within us as spiritual Sound and Light.
The mind and intellect cannot know or understand God, because the origin of mind is in the causal plane, which is lower than the pure spiritual realms. Mind can know only what lies within its own realm and below.
The soul has its own power of knowing, beyond the intellectual faculties of the mind. When the soul sheds its coverings of mind and body, it is free to “know” God instantly, by direct perception. But it is only through meditation that the soul can attain this level of direct perception and obtain spiritual knowledge. Meditation is the technique given by the mystics to liberate the soul from the dross of mind and matter, so that it can freely know and merge into God. Freed of the weight of karma, the soul naturally rises to its Source. Thus it experiences true self-realization and God-realization.
Recent research has demonstrated that many of the mystic experiences of the prophets, which are recounted in the Bible, came about through meditation. Contemporary scholar and mystic Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan maintained that if one reads the original Hebrew Bible accurately, one will find many terms which are precise references to the prophets’ practice of meditation. The most important of these is hitbodedut, literally, “seclusion.” However, Kaplan says, these terms are generally mistranslated and their true meaning has been lost, which is why few people today are aware that the prophets of the Bible practiced meditation. As Kaplan has remarked,
“Many people consider the prophets of the Bible to be nothing more than spokesmen and agitators, who spoke out against the wrongs of their people and governments. What is not generally known is the fact that these prophets were among the greatest mystics of all times, actively engaged in the loftiest meditative techniques.”
Throughout Jewish history, many of the rabbis and sages believed that direct experience of God is possible, resulting in a higher type of knowledge than can be gained by means of intellect. Aside from the visions of the prophets recorded in the Bible, the rabbis based this belief on the passage in Psalms, “O, Taste and see that the Lord is good; Happy is the man that taketh refuge in Him” (Psalm 34:9). The word taste is very graphic, tangible, and non-intellectual. It suggests knowledge through direct experience of the divine essence, rather than by thinking or reasoning. Similarly, many Indian and Muslim mystics have sung of their experience of the Divine in meditation as tasting the inner ambrosia, the spiritual food, and as drinking the inner nectar.
The rabbis of the Talmud interpreted God’s command to Abraham in the Bible, “lekh lekha” — “go to yourself” (Genesis 12:12), as meaning “go within yourself”….
The Jewish mystics of the Sufi tradition, as well as the later Kabbalists of Safed and elsewhere, practiced various forms of meditation in order to obtain knowledge of God. For example, according to the thirteenth-century Spanish Jewish mystic Isaac ibn Latif, even the highest type of intellectual understanding reaches only the “back” of the Divine, but a picture of the “face” of the Lord can be gained through supra-intellectual ecstasy, which is an experience even higher than prophecy. Ibn Latif calls this type of direct perception “the beatitude of supreme communion.”….
Meditation is the proper mystic training that brings the soul in direct contact with the divine reality and “the beatitude of supreme communion.” In meditation, one learns to detach the soul from the mind and body and merge it in the Lord, its Source.
— Miriam Bokser Caravella,
“The Holy Name —
Mysticism in Judaism”
Wow!
This is terrific … one of the best I've read on this subject. It's about time the concept got stretched a bit!